


when you're going through hell (keep going for me)

by cywscross



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Peter Hale, BAMF Stiles, Bad Alpha Laura Hale, Bad Parent Sheriff Stilinski, Codependency, Developing Relationship, Don't copy to another site, Eichen | Echo House, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Pack Feels, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Steter Secret Santa 2018, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-26 01:06:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 57,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17132132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cywscross/pseuds/cywscross
Summary: Peter is abandoned in the aftermath of the fire, and Eichen House takes ruthless advantage. Six years later, when he's finally able to move again, he finds himself in a cell with a boy in a straitjacket.(Kate’s biggest mistake was letting Peter live. Eichen House’s biggest mistake was letting Peter meet Stiles.)





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SalazarTipton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SalazarTipton/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Steter Secret Santa fic for peachstiles/SalazarTipton! Sorry for the delay but I hope you like it! Although I did take a glance at the AO3 collection and like at least half the fics are holiday-themed, so I feel obliged to warn you that this fic has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas.
> 
> (There are four chapters and all of it is written. But my area's been having power outages on and off for four days now so if not all of it's posted when you see this, it's just because I'm waiting for the power to come back on.)
> 
> Enjoy!

 

For the longest time, Peter doesn’t know what’s happening to him. He’s in pain, endless, crippling pain that he can’t get away from no matter how much he screams and sobs and thrashes. Even worse is the broken void where his pack bonds used to be, every last one of them shattered. In a brief lucid moment, he remembers the fire, remembers the mountain ash, remembers the wolfsbane. He also remembers Derek and Laura, the last two who weren’t in the house, who _survived_ , and he remembers those two bonds snapping too, brutal and deliberate and merciless no matter how desperately Peter tried to cling to them.

Then he’s under again, darkness tinted with the red of flames and clouded with smoke like he’s still in the house, trying to reach his family. His wolf howls and howls and howls until the noise blends together with the long unending cries of his pack, burning alive even now in the prison of his own mind.

 

* * *

 

Time passes. The pain doesn’t stop. There are days when he burns and burns and doesn’t remember why, doesn’t even remember his own name. He wants it to stop, begs for it to stop, for someone to just kill him, and he doesn’t know if he manages to say it out loud or if he’s lost the ability to do that too.

Eventually, he starts getting flashes. There are people, he realizes dimly. Gloved hands and white coats. They talk over him but their voices are muffled to his ears so Peter can’t make out what they’re saying.

They touch him. At first, he can’t feel anything but pain, but sometimes, he catches glimpses of them lifting his arms or rolling him onto his side, and that hurts even more. Then he begins feeling the pressure of their fingers, their hands, at his neck, on his face, manoeuvring various parts of his body. The pain ebbs, just a little, and numbness sets in in various parts of his body but he still retains just enough sense of touch for him to feel other things against his skin. Other people, which only nauseates him or causes him more pain in turn.

He hates it, and he tries to tell them that. When that doesn’t work, he tries to lash out, but his body won’t obey him, and it always leaves him more exhausted than ever, the darkness dragging him back down.

 

* * *

 

Once, he’s cognizant enough to feel himself being moved, and he doesn’t know when his eyes opened but he can see a shadowed ceiling above him that stretches the length of some stale-smelling hallway. Growls and cries reach his ears, and he doesn’t know where he is for that to be possible. Maybe the sounds are just his imagination, his memories. It wouldn’t be the first time.

They enter a room. Peter knows it’s windowless because he can’t smell any natural scents at all, no wind, no trees, not even the lingering heat of a hot day or petrichor after a rainfall. He’s lifted - probably from a stretcher - and dumped onto a new surface. They’re not deliberately trying to hurt him, he thinks, but they aren’t gentle about it. They just… don’t care. The bedding underneath him scratches the back of his neck and jostles his injuries. He would’ve made some sort of noise, but even that’s beyond him now.

Footsteps retreat, a door clangs shut, the lights go out.

Peter goes under again.

 

* * *

 

The next time he becomes aware of his surroundings, someone’s shining a light in his eyes. It stings, and he wants to twist his head away or even just close his eyes, but he can’t seem to find the muscles for even that much. Eventually, the light is removed, and Peter is left staring at another ceiling, his vision swimming with white spots.

He catches a flash of silver in his peripheral. Sharp, he thinks, and he’s proven correct when a gloved hand holding a knife appears in his line of sight.

He tries to move. Tries to throw himself to one side, away from the knife. Nothing works. He’s locked in his own body, and something like fear bubbles up inside him as the knife comes down.

He feels the exact moment it cuts into him, an odd searing sensation that gives way to new pain. A dull sort of pain but pain nonetheless.

It’s nothing new, at this point, but he still wants to scream.

Whoever is looming over him cuts and cuts and cuts, until Peter can’t tell where one laceration starts and another burn ends. It bleeds together, just as his body bleeds.

It’s a relief when he passes out again.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, he opens his eyes to the room without windows, walls closing in all around him, trapping him in a way that makes him feel like he can’t even breathe. _Cell_ , his mind supplies, and his wolf snarls, but they’re both too weak to do anything about their situation.

Other times, he opens his eyes to a brightly lit room, sterile and cold, with the clinical kiss of a knife in his flesh. His wolf whimpers, maybe he does too, but whoever is torturing him either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

He never sees any other place, and Peter’s not sure what he did to deserve either.

 

* * *

 

“Man, you are one hell of a boring cellmate.”

It’s the first coherent sentence Peter has heard since he burned. He’s started hearing snatches of words here and there, but this is the first time someone has said something that actually makes sense to him.

He’s in his cell again, and it _is_ his now. He finds himself resigned to it, if only because he knows he’s not going to be getting up and walking out anytime soon. Possibly for the rest of his life but that’s a thought that terrifies him so he tries not to think about it too much.

He’s on his back. He’s always on his back, and that makes everything worse. Wolves aren’t meant to show their bellies when they aren’t safe, and Peter hasn’t been safe in a very long time.

He strains his ears for more, because he’s pretty sure the person was talking _to_ him and not _about_ him the way literally everyone else in this place does.

But nothing more comes, and Peter doesn’t know if he’s more frustrated or disappointed. He supposes it hardly matters either way.

 

* * *

 

Eventually, he heals enough for heartbeats to reach his range of hearing again. When he’s on the table, the one they don’t even bother strapping him to before they start cutting him open again, there’s always two or three heartbeats hovering around him, steady as clockwork like they might as well be slicing apart a slab of meat instead of a living being. He’s aware enough now - a mixed blessing - to realize that they’re cutting pieces of him out, half a liver, a kidney, and even an entire lung once which was agonizing, and Peter, drowning in his own blood, thought for certain at the time that that would be what finally kills him.

Apparently though, either he’s not very good at dying or people just aren’t very good at killing him, and when he woke up again, he was back in his cell, his thoughts hazy and his body aching all over, especially in his chest area, but still alive. He didn’t even know werewolves could grow back an entire organ, especially one as big and immediately essential as a lung, but he supposes it makes sense— if a werewolf can stay alive long enough for their supernatural healing factor to overcome the damage - and these crazies have clearly figured out a way to make him do exactly that - then they can probably heal from just about anything.

He never thought advanced healing could be a curse until now.

From what Peter’s managed to glean whenever the people who have him - doctors of some kind? - discuss him in clinical tones over his head, he’s being harvested for his organs. And since he’s a werewolf, so long as they’re careful, and they _are_ careful, at least about their… _work_ , then he could potentially do this forever, or at least until the day old age finally trumps cell regeneration.

The mere thought of it makes him want to throw up, except he can’t do that either, and even if he could, he’s long since decided he won’t give them the satisfaction. His screams remain trapped in his own head; it isn’t as if he doesn’t have plenty of practice at that already.

With the ability to hear heartbeats again though comes the realization that he isn’t alone in his cell. Whenever he’s conscious and not taken out to what he assumes is an operating room of some sort, he’s on a cot in his own cell, except it’s not his alone because there’s always a heartbeat drumming away somewhere to his left, out of sight of even his peripheral vision. He thinks it’s probably whoever spoke to him that one time but Peter hasn’t heard anything since. He rarely hears them move, although on occasion, he does happen to be awake when the… guards? come in and haul his cellmate away for… maybe a few hours before carting him back.

He wonders if they’re a werewolf too. They don’t smell like one but nothing smells like it should in this place so it could be possible. They don’t smell of blood or even pain though so maybe they’re not being used for organ trafficking or whatever other black market organization these people work for because there’s no way any of this is legal.

( _Which makes him think of Laura and Derek, his niece and nephew, his Alpha and packmate, his former Pack, and he doesn’t know if they put him here for whatever insane reason or if they left him behind and this place decided no one would miss an omega werewolf, but it doesn’t matter either way, they still abandoned him, and after all this time, the hurt and betrayal have been all but buried by the overwhelming urge to rip their throats out one day._ )

He resents it a bit, the possibility that perhaps he’s the only one of the two of them being carved up for his body parts. He knows a good person probably wouldn’t but he can’t help it. Then he wonders _why_ his cellmate isn’t suffering the same thing, and he can’t decide if whatever they _are_ being subjected to is better or worse than what this hellhole is using him for, and that makes the resentment recede a little.

Every victim in here must be suffering something. After all, this hardly seems like the sort of place that would be kind to any of its prisoners.

 

* * *

 

Time doesn’t blur together as much, the more he heals. _Healing_ doesn’t seem like something he should be capable of doing considering what’s being done to him, but he does, little by little. It still hurts, and being an omega doesn’t help, nor do his constant injuries, but his body patches itself up at glacial speeds nonetheless.

And with this new awareness, he discovers new things. He finds out that he’s fed maybe once a day, through an IV. Someone would come in and hook him up, and it gives him just enough nutrients to keep him alive and on the mend but not to stop the low-grade hunger from making itself known now that he’s capable of feeling it.

They give him a bath, surprisingly, every few days, although he supposes even these lunatics don’t want to deal with bad hygiene. He’s not sure exactly how many days - he doubts he’d know even if he could bathe himself - but they carry him out fairly regularly, maybe twice a week, stripping him and lowering him into a tub of water that’s lukewarm at best, and then giving him a brusque scrub-down that makes the scabbing burns along his right side split open and bleed more often than not. Soon, he also regains enough feeling in his lower body to realize he’s constantly catheterized, which makes sense but also means they put their hands on him down there as well, even more than just washing him would require.

For once, all of it, every last bit, is more humiliating than painful, and the urge to kill every single one of his jailers burns harshly in his gut. But like all the other times, there’s nothing Peter can do but learn to endure this too.

He also finds out that he isn’t placed under the doctors’ scalpels as much as he thought he was. Which makes sense because they need to give even him time to heal, especially with his compromised healing factor, and in the meantime, there are probably plenty of other prisoners to take their pick from. So most of his time is actually spent in his cell, and he almost misses the long periods of unconsciousness from before because staring at the ceiling day in and day out gets very boring very quickly.

It’s not hard to occupy his mind with plans of revenge instead, on this place, on Laura and Derek, on the people who set his family’s house on fire and burned them all to death. He obsesses over them, fantasizes about what he’ll do to them when ( _if_ ) he gets his hands on them, and it makes everything just a little bit more bearable.

 _One day,_ he swears to himself. _One day._

 

* * *

 

And one day, he finally manages to twitch a finger. Considering he couldn’t do even that much for however long he’s been in here, he feels his internal burst of triumph is perfectly justified.

He works at it, whenever he can, slowly and as subtly as he can in case there are cameras in his cell. One finger, again and again until it’s not something he has to force, then two fingers, then three. The day he’s able to flex both his hands and shift from blunt nails to sharp claws, he’s transported to the surgical room again. He clings fiercely to the memory of his progress and reminds himself over and over again that it’s too soon to give himself away, and that helps him lock his screams behind his teeth. He can make sound now, and a few moans still slip out despite his best effort, but the doctors ignore him for the most part, and once they’re done removing another kidney, they sew him up again and send him back to his cell without realizing that their victim is no longer largely unconscious. And as much as he hates to admit it, it helps too that he can _only_ move his hands at this point - the rest of his body is still largely paralyzed, and so he only has to concentrate on making sure he doesn’t pop his claws, and that his facial muscles don’t seize too badly.

He passes out for… some time as soon as his back hits his cot again, and when he wakes, the lights are off - Peter suspects the lights are always off at night but on during the day, or maybe vice-versa - and the pain in his torso doesn’t make him want to claw out his own stomach just to make it stop, so he figures it’s been a while.

He breathes in, then out, slowly. He flexes his hands and licks his dry lips. He’s still too tired to start working on his own crude version of physiotherapy again but it’s nice to be able to move what he can of his own body, however little that is.

“So,” someone drawls from his left in the darkness of the cell, and Peter freezes, “Awake again. You finally gonna be more interesting, Mr. Werewolf?”

There are days when Peter almost forgets he even has a cellmate. They’re so quiet, they never speak, and if they didn’t get up once in a while to pace the cell, Peter would’ve thought they were paralyzed too. As it is, he’s been more or less convinced that they’re forcibly drugged or something every time they’re taken out of the cell because surely nobody with a full grasp of their motor skills can stay so… inactive all the time. Or so silent. After that one time, and Peter half-thinks at this point that he imagined it, his cellmate hasn’t said a single word since.

Said cellmate says nothing else now either, clearly waiting for an answer. Peter thinks about not responding - it would be the smart thing to do, to keep his only trump card hidden until he can at least do something with it, and what if his cellmate sells him out or there really are cameras in here? And yet…

And yet, in that moment, a wave of loneliness and an overwhelming desire for company, _any_ company, almost crushes him. He _wants_ in a way he hasn’t ever wanted anything else, not even revenge, and before he can stop himself, he’s rasping out, “Who’re you?”

His voice comes out in a hoarse, mangled mess of what it used to be, but the words come nonetheless, and they’re even mostly audible.

For a few seconds, silence falls in the cell again, and then the same voice replies in dry, almost flippant tones, “Insurance, probably. But you can call me Stiles. And what about you, Mr. Werewolf? I think you owe me a name at the very least, after all these years.”

_Years. Oh god._

Peter has to concentrate on breathing for a minute, in and out, in and out, until the strange tangle of panic and grief that hits him out of nowhere fades again.

“Peter,” He eventually croaks out. He pauses, then forces out, “How… many years… has it been?”

“Not sure exactly,” His cellmate - _Stiles_ \- answers easily. “I think we get fed once a day, but I didn’t know that at first so I didn’t bother counting, and I’ve probably missed a few days here and there. As close as I can tell though, it’s been almost six years since they stashed you in here with me, give or take. If you were in a different cell before, I wouldn’t know.”

_Six years. Six years. **Six-**_

“Hey, calm down,” Stiles cuts in, and for the first time, something sharp enters his voice. “If the guards see you throwing a fit, they’ll gas us unconscious. And that’s _all_ they’ll do if we’re lucky, but considering the fact that we’re here at all, luck screwed us over a long time ago.”

Peter drags in a shaky breath that rattles down his throat and feels like it gets stuck somewhere in his chest. He does it again and again until he regains a thin veneer of calm that at least allows him to think.

Six years. In a way, it feels like it’s been even longer than that. But, he thinks, some part of him still clung to the hope that it hasn’t been _years_ , maybe months at most, and… and…

( _And he promised himself, deep down, that if Laura ever came back for him, got him out, he’d forget she left him behind in the first place, or he’d believe her if she told him someone - hunters maybe - abducted him, and she’d been looking for him ever since._

 _But that’s a fairy tale, and he learned a long time ago that there’s no such thing in real life, so he knows full well that she’s never coming back, not for him, not ever._ )

He lies there in the darkness for a while, just… digesting everything, and his cellmate doesn’t interrupt. His thoughts turn to Stiles, which is an easier subject to focus on than how long he’s been in this place. Male, and young, by the sounds of it. Younger than Peter. And…

“You said… since they put me in here with you,” He frowns. “How long… have you been here?”

Stiles hums, and there’s a note of surprise in the sound, like he didn’t expect Peter to pick up on that, or maybe to ask about it at all. “Dunno. Like I said, I didn’t count at first. But maybe seven years or so? Had the cell all to myself back then. Not that there was much of a difference after you came. You’re not a very interesting cellmate.”

Peter can’t help it - he rolls his eyes. Something close to amusement sparks in him, and he finds himself shooting back sardonically, “I’m so sorry my comatose state deprived you of new entertainment.”

A pause, then a startled, delighted laugh darts out into the open between them.

“You’re funny!” Stiles exclaims, like that’s the best thing to happen to him in… years. That’s actually a depressingly real possibility.

It hits a chord in Peter though, those two words, the way they were said. Stiles sounded… young. Uncomfortably young, in that one moment.

“How old are you?” He asks abruptly, and he regrets it a little when the rare scent of joy is replaced by something far more defensive.

Stiles doesn’t answer right away, and when he does, it’s not really an answer at all. “How rude. You’re not supposed to ask someone their age, you know.”

“I’m fairly certain that’s just in regards to insecure women,” Peter retorts wryly.

“That’s sexist,” Stiles volleys back without missing a beat, and Peter sighs and lets the matter drop.

“Why are you in here?” He asks instead. “What are you?”

Except that doesn’t get much of an answer either. The silence drags on until Peter almost speaks again, but then Stiles lets out a giggle, one unhinged enough to send a chill down Peter’s spine.

“I did something bad,” Stiles explains, sounding entirely too amused. “So my dad dumped me in here. Cuz I’m a murderer.”

He doesn’t say anything else. Peter doesn’t ask anything else either.

 

* * *

 

Peter drifts off sometime during the night, and when he wakes again, the lights are on, the orderlies are just leaving with the IVs, and his conversation with Stiles rushes back to the forefront of his memories.

He waits until the door closes before whispering, “Stiles?”

“Hmm?” Comes the disinterested response. He sounds neither as friendly as he did for the majority of their exchange last night, nor as manic as the note on which it ended.

Peter mulls over what he wants to ask this time. In the end, he settles for, “You can walk around, right? Could I… see you?”

At the very least, he’d like a face to pair with the voice.

For a moment, he thinks Stiles will refuse, but then there’s a rustle of fabric, followed by the muted thump of bare feet on the ground, and a few seconds later, a lanky figure finally shuffles into Peter’s line of sight.

The first thing that registers is the fact that Stiles is very, very pale. Not pale the way some people are naturally born, or even if they have an indoor job and don’t go out for exercise, but so pale he’s nearly paper-white, like… like he hasn’t seen sunlight or breathed fresh air in years. He has a smattering of moles dotting his skin here and there, and they stand out all the more in contrast.

The next thing is his eyes. His irises are a liquid gold surrounding black pupils, and they don’t even flicker. Whatever colour they were before doesn’t show at all, or perhaps they’ve always been like this.

The third is how _young_ he is. Even with the faint stress lines creasing his face and the gauntness of his cheeks, there’s a youth to his overall appearance - thick shaggy brown hair, cut crudely, and a resilience even now in the brightness of his gaze - that tells Peter this _boy_ can’t possibly be any older than sixteen, maybe seventeen at most. Subtract seven years, and Peter wonders who the _hell_ Stiles supposedly killed for him to end up in here.

And the last. The last of course - wrapped over the same flimsy gown Peter is wearing - is the dull white straitjacket binding the boy’s arms and hands to his own body.

“...Why?” Is the only thing Peter manages this time.

Stiles laughs again, except this time there’s dark sort of humour to it. He moves away, presumably back to his own cot.

“I told you,” Stiles says over the squeak of his mattress as he lies down again. “I murdered someone. I’m _dangerous_.”

“...And you’re insurance,” Peter recalls slowly. “Because you’re... dangerous. Insurance against me?”

Again, there’s that drawn-out silence. Peter’s quickly learning to wait it out.

“They almost never take this thing off me anymore,” Stiles tells him almost offhandedly. “They do in the showers but I’ve got metal cuffs on underneath this too, and I _can_ burn through those but it would take days. The only other way to unlock them is remote control, and they have that stashed away somewhere. They like taking my blood - dunno what they do with it - but they don’t try to experiment on me anymore, after the the first few times.” He cackles. “If they realize you’re awake, they’ll probably start drugging you. If you go nuts before they can though, I’ll be the first person in line for you to rip apart. But if you do that, they’ll unlock the cuffs too and count on me to take you with me. Or at least slow you down long enough for them to take both of us out.”

Peter still can’t turn his head, and Stiles is too far away for him to see even when he glances in the boy’s direction.

Stiles doesn’t seem that dangerous, honestly. A little crazy, but who wouldn’t go insane after spending so long in this place?

And if he’s a killer… well, it’s not like Peter has any room to point fingers.

“Tell me where we are,” He says at last.

There’s no point dwelling on whether or not Stiles will _want_ to kill him if he ever gets out of that straitjacket and reveals whatever’s underneath. For now, they’re both prisoners here, and all Peter really cares about is the fact that he finally has someone who isn’t actively torturing him to talk to.

 

* * *

 

More time passes. Stiles tells him they’re in Eichen House, and it makes Peter shudder. If werewolves and other creatures of the night are the monsters under the bed for regular humans, then Eichen House is the bogeyman for the supernatural, or at least the Hale Pack. Peter grew up hearing horror stories about this place (“Clean your room or we’ll leave you in Eichen House.”; “Be back by curfew or Eichen House will snatch you away.”; “Don’t wander off Hale lands just because you’re old enough to go on a run through the woods by yourself now or Eichen House will get you.”), and what do you know - the reality of it is even worse than the tales.

He learns he’s in cell number 20, and since nobody uses actual names around here, at least when it comes to the prisoners, he’s 20B, and Stiles is 20A. Reduced to numbers and letters. Less than a sentient being.

He learns too that there aren’t any cameras in their cell. Outside, yes, and guards glance in through the glass window in the door from time to time to make sure all the prisoners are secure, but, as Stiles reveals to him, there are prisoners here with a knack for technomagic— “Saw one on one of my shower trips; she had all the hallway cameras shooting lasers somehow before her shock collar killed her. They probably don’t want to give people who can do that an actual weapon in their cell.”

So the cell really is just three cement walls and a pane of transparent glass to close it off - probably unbreakable even to supernatural creatures - with a door built into it. The glass wall is set a few feet away from the fourth cement wall of the room that has a door of its own set into it. Both are locked by actual keys and a keypad, and the outer one - while not completely soundproofed - is still thick enough to insulate most noise. The cell itself contains two cots and a toilet (“If being able to pee without hands was a sport, I’d win gold.”), but nothing else.

Peter’s not sure how he’ll get past any of the security in this place but he begins working to regain his mobility in earnest now, and as far as he knows, Stiles says nothing about this development to anyone.

 

* * *

 

“They don’t give you solid food?” Peter asks one day, lying on his side, finally able to see Stiles without asking the boy to come over.

On the opposite side of the cell and also facing Peter, Stiles shrugs, the straitjacket limiting even that movement. “Can’t even hold a fork. And the crap in the IVs is probably cheaper than having to cook actual food for us. Besides, whatever’s in them is like an all-in-one survival injection - I don’t really _need_ food, I’ve never gotten sick, and I haven’t needed to drink a sip of water in seven years.”

He trails off, and his gaze wanders away from Peter and up the ceiling. Peter thinks he finally knows how Stiles has managed to stay silent for so long. There are times when he just… isn’t there, mentally. He retreats somewhere inside his head, and it can happen even in the middle of a conversation. Sometimes, Peter can call him back, sometimes he can’t. This is, thankfully, one of the former times, and when Stiles _does_ talk, he’s not reticent about it at all.

“Stiles,” Peter prods, and Stiles blinks once before those eerie gold eyes snap back to him. “Isn’t anyone missing you? Friends? Family?”

Because Peter is one thing - as loath as he is to admit it, it wouldn’t be that hard to fake the death of someone caught in a house fire and burned badly enough that people probably didn’t think he’d survive. It’s another to snatch a nine- or ten-year-old boy without anybody asking questions.

But Stiles just snorts and rolls onto his back. “Probably not. I didn’t have any friends. People at school didn’t like me cuz I was kind of… well, I was the weird kid nobody knew what to do with. _And_ my dad was a cop. And then I only had my dad left, and _he_ thought I snapped and went crazy. That’s why he put me in here. I think… I think upstairs is supposed to be some kinda nuthouse, not a prison, and I was there for a few weeks. I was in solitary cuz they said I was a danger case or something but I was still brought out for the stupid group therapy.” He pauses, frowning at the ceiling, something complicated flitting across his features. “...Dad never visited though. I think that was why they thought it was okay to lock me up down here. There were visitation days for patients but he never came to any of them, and after a couple months, I went to sleep one night, and the next time I woke up, I was here.” He grins, sudden and too bright to be real. “I didn’t really expect him to come visit, not after what I did. So even if he realized someone took me, I don’t think he’d do anything about it. He’s probably relieved he doesn’t have to deal with me anymore.”

Peter mulls this over in his head, and a niggling suspicion begins to form. After a few minutes, he chances quietly, “Your mother...” He doesn’t quite finish, isn’t quite sure he wants to air the words at all, but Stiles seems to hear them anyway, and he looks over again with gold-mad eyes and a rictus smile.

“You’re really smart, Peter!” The boy declares even as his smile widens. “Yup, she’s the one! I killed my mom, and Dad was the one who caught me!”

He bursts into uncontrollable giggles that last so long he’s wheezing for breath by the time they taper off. Peter listens and says nothing more, wondering instead what exactly it was that broke this boy so badly. The murder? Eichen House?

Or perhaps his father’s betrayal when the man abandoned his son here all those years ago.

 

* * *

 

“What about you, Mr. Werewolf?” Stiles asks a few days later, his voice reduced to a sleepy mumble. “How’d you get burned so bad? The docs here are usually more careful when they bring their merchandise in.”

For once, it was Peter who had to wait uneasily in his cell as Stiles was escorted out somewhere for what felt like hours, and when he came back, his skin was even whiter than before, which was something Peter didn’t think was possible. The boy had stumbled over to his cot after being shoved back into the cell and collapsed immediately, not moving again until only a few minutes ago, and even now, well, anemic patients look more lively.

“I’m O-negative,” Stiles explained a while back. “That’s probably why they keep me. I mean unless my blood is magical or something, I’m not really worth the cell space. I think they wanted to cut me open at the beginning, but-” A smile that was equal parts glee and half-buried rage stretched his lips. “-they couldn’t.”

It made Peter wonder just what Stiles is, to be strong enough that even the depravity of Eichen House can’t touch him. Or at least not as much as it could. Peter envies him, but surprisingly, the resentment doesn’t make a return. He’s experienced exactly what those doctors are capable of, and even Peter’s not quite petty enough to wish that on a teenager who might as well still be a child in some ways. Bad enough that Stiles tends to come back looking like he’s lost half his weight in blood.

For a while, Peter just watches Stiles breathe, shallow and slow. His eyes are closed, and he looks like he’s fallen asleep again, but…

It’s the first time Stiles has asked him anything of significance aside from his name. Peter’s asked far more questions, and Stiles has answered most of them, as many as he can, and considering he’s also a prisoner here, he actually knows quite a bit. Probably the only good thing about having been stuck here for so long. He only gets vague when it comes to his own past, and even then he’s given Peter the bare bones of it.

“...There was a fire,” Peter says eventually, and Stiles stirs, eyes fluttering open. “Someone set fire to my home, with most of us still inside. There was mountain ash around the house, and that damn pie- My nephew Derek, he had a girlfriend. I think he started seeing her shortly after the school term started, but he was very secretive about it, wouldn’t tell us who she was, wouldn’t bring her over, barely even mentioned her when any of us asked. The only reason we found out early on was because he’d come home smelling like perfume sometimes. He said she was shy, and he wanted to keep the relationship to himself for a while, and some other asinine nonsense we shouldn’t have believed. _He_ shouldn’t have believed. I certainly didn’t, but Talia, my sister, she was mostly just amused, and even if she didn’t believe it, she was willing to play along. Thought her son just wanted to keep his little girlfriend to himself for a while without us sticking our noses in. Then Derek brought home a pie one day, said his girlfriend made it, it was a gift, and she was a budding chef, so we reheated it for dessert the next night. But there must have been a strain of wolfsbane inside, and some other poison that affected our human members too. We couldn’t smell it or taste it, but I remember feeling tired later, we all did, and before we knew it, we were all asleep. By the time some of us managed to wake up because it was getting hard to breathe, the house was on fire, and none of us could shift. We carried the ones who were still unconscious downstairs and tried to get out through the tunnels - it was an escape route attached to our basement when the house was first built - but it was blocked off by mountain ash on the other side. We couldn’t even get the door open. I managed to break a window and crawl out, and I tried to get the children out at least, but then...” He thinks hard. His memories of that time are foggy at best. “I think the fire hit the gas main. Something blew up. Next thing I knew, I was here, or maybe a hospital first.”

He falls silent for a moment, shoving down the grief threatening to choke him even after all this time. “Derek and my niece Laura weren’t there,” He continues abruptly. “Derek called and said basketball practice was running late so he’d be going out with his team for dinner, and as far as I know, even after the house was set on fire, he hadn’t gotten back yet. And Laura was still in Berkeley, she went to school there. Her flight was delayed so she couldn’t make it home that night. They survived, I _know_ they did, and they-”

He cuts himself off. What is he doing? He didn’t mean to reveal half as much.

“...The Hales were werewolves?” Stiles slurs out, and Peter blinks, an unbidden amused noise scratching at the back of his throat. Something in him settles, calming his previous agitation.

“Most of us,” Peter confirms. “A few were humans, but they were still Pack.”

He wonders if anyone bothered giving them a proper funeral. Wonders if Laura and Derek stuck around long enough for that. Wonders if anyone has figured out who set the fire. Wonders if Derek came forward and confessed. Even if Derek’s girlfriend was completely normal and freaked out when told about werewolves, he doubts someone like that would’ve gone to such extremes as to burn an entire family alive. It makes more sense if some hunter bitch seduced Derek, who has all the common sense and self-preservation instincts of a dead lemming, and hunters in general are good at committing genocide.

Silence falls again, but a gentler one this time. Minutes tick by and the lights go off, leaving the cell pitch black to the point where even Peter can’t see anything. He almost thinks Stiles really has drifted off again, but then-

“...My mom,” Stiles murmurs quietly into the darkness, “Was sick. Frontotemporal dementia. It made her… not herself. She saw things, heard things. Believed things that weren’t real. She basically went crazy, slowly. And the worse it got, the more often she thought I was trying to kill her. Dad didn’t wanna put her in the hospital, and she didn’t wanna go anyway, so I was left alone with her a lot. My dad was only a deputy at the beginning, and then he ran for Sheriff which meant he was out campaigning a lot, and then he won which meant he was really busy at the station, so he didn’t see…” He trails off for a moment, and then jumps back in with a burst of words, “I _loved_ my mom. I loved her more than anything. So when she started- Like at first, it was just a smack here and there, y’know? Or she’d lock me in the cellar, or she’d yell at me, but she was always sorry afterwards when she was herself again. So I didn’t tell dad. I wanted her to be okay, and Dad always said she would be, that she’d be better soon.

“But she didn’t- She just got worse. Most of the time, she didn’t remember she had a kid. And for some reason, she always thought I was out to kill her.”

He barks out a strange seesawing laugh, and Peter’s dimly aware of his own claws digging into the threadbare mattress under his hands.

“So she started trying to kill me,” Stiles confesses at last, and the waver in his voice suggests that it’s probably the first time he’s ever said it out loud. “She pushed me down the stairs a couple times. She didn’t like it when I looked at her so she’d try to scratch out my eyes if she caught me looking. And she tried to drown me once when I was taking a bath. Dad came home early that day and managed to stop her. We didn’t talk about- I mean he checked her into the hospital after that. She was a little better, with constant care, but she still didn’t really remember me. Whenever I visited, she’d start screaming. But Dad didn’t have that much time to sit with her so I- I couldn’t just _leave_ her there with just the nurses and doctors. So I tried to keep visiting.”

Peter hears an audible swallow from him, then another shaky giggle. “I probably shouldn’t have. It was stupid. I mean it was pretty obvious she didn’t remember who I was anymore, or at least she only remembered that I was out to kill her. Sometimes, she’d sneak out of her room and onto the roof just to get away from me. I think she would’ve jumped if I didn’t run for a nurse every time. The doctors started telling me I should only visit when she was asleep, so- so that’s what I did.

“The last time I visited her, the nurse told me she was sleeping, so I thought it would be okay to go in. I dunno if she was only pretending, or if she woke up after I sat down, but she had- for a sick person, she was really strong, and she grabbed my hair and started choking me, and she was talking about demons and eyes and- and I don’t really remember the rest, just that she was trying to kill me again, and I couldn’t breathe and she started screaming and I just _wanted her to let go-_ ”

He falls silent, and for a few long seconds, Peter can only hear the stutter of their respective heartbeats.

“I remember shoving her away with my hands,” Stiles whispers, imparting a secret long held close. “And there was this flash of light, and then she flew backwards right off the bed, and her head hit the floor really hard, just as the nurse came in with my dad.

“I overheard later, that the head wound didn’t kill her. Her heart exploded, somehow. They said she must've had some kind of heart attack. Nobody actually pointed fingers but they knew I did something. Not just pushed her out of bed. They knew I killed her. The nurse who found us first was pretty freaked out. And she told a doctor who told Dad, so he knew. I was pretty out of it by then though. I think I missed some stuff but I remember him taking me to Eichen House later. He said the people here would help me. Because I was sick, and I needed help. He wouldn’t- He wouldn’t look at me at all. He didn’t even ask me what happened. He just dropped me off, and that was the last time I saw him.”

His next breath is wet and uneven, like a sob half-formed. Peter can sit up these days but he still can’t walk, so all he can do is lie there in the darkness and listen to Stiles not-cry. He considers saying something like _it’s not your fault_ or _there was nothing else you could do_ , but they sound like cheap consolations at best, and Stiles has had seven years to think of every shallow comfort and guilty self-recrimination known to mankind, he doesn’t need Peter to do it for him too, and so in the end he says nothing at all.

Still, he dredges up a murky memory of Beacon Hills’ newest Sheriff, elected approximately two and a half years before the fire. He remembers hearing something about the Sheriff’s sick wife passing away in the hospital about a year and a half into his term, and Peter hadn’t thought much of it at the time. But he also remembers Cora coming home and mentioning something about the Sheriff’s kid being pulled out of school for some reason. Peter hadn’t thought much of that either.

Now he knows.

Stiles’ breathing evens out again. Peter waits a beat, then enquires lightly, “At least you can use it against the doctors too? Considering the fashion statement you’re making.”

A pause, then a steadier if slightly hoarse voice snorts, “It’s the only way they know how to block the… thing I can do, short of keeping me unconscious all the time, and I hear that’s not good for blood transfusions. I dunno what this jacket or the cuffs are made of but they make my hands feel numb. And like I told you, if it’s just the cuffs, I can burn through them, really slowly, which is why they added the jacket, and that stops me from ruining the cuffs. I can still feel my power but it just… doesn’t come out all the way.” His words take on a distinctly vindictive tone. “They wanted to cut me open to see what made me tick. They couldn’t get close enough, not for long. I just… kept blowing them up.” He laughs again. “They put me on the table seven times, even tried to drug me after the first time, but apparently, I don’t need to be awake for my power to activate. It just goes off, as soon as they cut into me with something sharp. They think I can’t control it, so I’ve been in this stupid thing ever since.”

Peter hones in on the wording. “‘They think’?”

He can hear Stiles’ smile. “And they were right.”

“‘Were’?”

“...Well,” Stiles sighs in a way that does nothing to hide the slyness underneath. “It _has_ been seven years.”

This time, it’s Peter’s turn to laugh. Apparently, it’s not just him with a card up his sleeve, waiting for the right moment to use it.

And for the first time, his thoughts begin to turn in a different direction.

He can’t escape alone, and he knows it. It’s something he’s tried to avoid thinking about. But… well.

He’s not alone anymore, is he?

 

* * *

 

Things change, after that night, even though they’re both still prisoners in the same cell. They don’t really mention their respective pasts again, not much beyond quiet words in the dead of night - Peter’s snarling “When I get out of here, I’ll hunt every last one of my pack’s murderers down, and I’ll make them _pay_.”, or Stiles’ half-hysterical “Do you think my dad’s dead? He had a drinking problem, y’know? Even before Mom died. Do you think he’s gone?”. They never assure each other, never offer meaningless platitudes; Peter’s never been the sort, and Stiles apparently isn’t either. But they listen to each other’s secrets, and they keep those secrets buried together.

Beyond that, there’s a burgeoning companionship growing between them, one that neither of them acknowledges out loud but both of them can feel. Peter starts telling Stiles of things he knows, things he learned. The boy was apparently _nine_ when his father tossed him in here, which honestly horrifies even Peter, so he can’t be expected to know everything from teenage slang to AP History.

Peter does the best he can, scrounges up what he can remember of high school math and chemistry equations and sexual education, the latter of which makes Stiles blush something fierce at first even when Peter tries to keep it somewhat PG, but the boy still hangs on to every word. He’s _smart_ , as Peter swiftly finds out, and he likes to learn, pretty much about anything. The cleverness doesn’t come as much of a surprise - it was something Peter suspected already after having listened to Stiles’ vernacular and general grasp of words, half of which he’s fairly certain the average kid is not supposed to know yet, and seven years in a prison isn’t likely to improve one’s formal education overly much. But he’s quick on the uptake, and his mind is constantly pursuing at least three different lines of enquiry at the same time, all of which he bombards Peter with whenever he can. It’s actually mildly terrifying but also fascinatingly impressive.

One of Peter’s best subjects is of course Business, which he also begins imparting to Stiles.

“But what kind of business did you help run?” Stiles asks persistently.

Peter sighs. “Architecture.”

Stiles blinks, clearly taken aback. “That’s… not what I expected.” He cocks his head. “Was it fun?”

Peter grins. “Very. And I made a lot of money doing it too.”

Stiles seems interested so Peter tells him of the houses he designed, some renovations, others from the ground up, the pride he felt when he was finally allowed his own projects despite a fair amount of people in his family telling him he was wasting his talents. They wanted him to be a lawyer, Peter confesses, or at least some career that would benefit the pack more than just the fat paychecks Peter contributed did for their coffers.

Stiles sits next to him for all of it, as much as he can while keeping a vigilant eye on the door. His arms are bound of course, but he perches on Peter’s cot, his thigh pressed against Peter’s hip, Peter’s hand resting on his knee.

Peter’s wolf growls happily when - after the lights go off - Stiles trips his way over and wriggles onto Peter’s cot. It’s a tight fit but they manage, and Peter even has enough mobility to drape a clumsy arm over the boy. They don’t dare fall asleep that way, just in case they get caught together, but for the time that they can, the warmth of another body pressed against his is something Peter didn’t think he’d ever be able to enjoy again. Judging by how content Stiles smells whenever he’s nestled against Peter’s chest, the boy feels the same way.

 

* * *

 

“Could you… blast your way out?” Peter asks. “If I rip that straitjacket off? And the cuffs?”

Stiles shrugs. “Probably. Before they strapped me into these things,” he rolls his shoulders as best he can, “I didn’t just kill the three docs around me, I wrecked the room too. So this place probably can’t hold me. Whatever’s in this jacket and the cuffs isn’t in the walls. And I can-” He squints at the glass wall. “I can sort of… _feel_ whether or not I can burn through whatever. I don’t think anything in this building would give me any trouble, at least from what I’ve seen.”

Peter nods. Good to know. He can sit up for hours now, and he’s even started taking his first shaky steps. They just need a bit longer, and then they’ll be able to escape.

He glances at Stiles. Thinks, not for the first time, that it would probably be the right thing to do to rip through that straitjacket now, and Stiles can escape himself. A good man would do it. The boy’s been in here long enough, hasn’t he?

But he can’t carry Peter with him, and for all that they’re so much closer these days, Peter… doesn’t want to find out if Stiles will leave him behind ( _too_ ) if given the opportunity. Stiles doesn’t need him to get out once the straitjacket and cuffs are off. Peter’s the one who needs Stiles.

There’s little enough difference, whether Stiles gets out now or later. Stiles just has to wait a bit longer. Peter will be well enough to run soon, and then they’ll escape together.

 

* * *

 

And then he does something foolish. Or rather, instinct takes over and he isn't given much of a choice.

He’s wheeled out again to the operating room. It's been a while since this last happened, noticeably longer even than usual, which Stiles says means Eichen House found some new inmates to play with. The doctors apparently always like to focus a bit more on the newcomers before slotting them into whatever rotation they have for their prisoners.

He’s healed enough from the fire that paralysis is no longer something that plagues him, but it turned out to be a double-edged sword. The last time the doctors cut out his spleen, he couldn’t help the way his limbs jerked no matter how hard he tried to hold still, and they ended up strapping him down, although at least they still seem to be under the assumption that he’s mostly catatonic. They do it right away this time, locking down his arms and legs with thick straps.

They still don’t give him any kind of anesthesia though, and the moment one of the two doctors standing over him start reeling off the organs they need this time - his liver again, bone marrow, and some lung tissue - Peter feels a jolt of fear rock through him.

He lasts five minutes and thirteen seconds - he counts. He thought it might help.

It doesn’t, and at five minutes and thirteen seconds, screams erupt from behind his teeth, his wolf takes over, and even with his abdomen cut open and feeling like he’s been halfway disemboweled, he still manages to wrench through the straps holding him down. One of his hands shoots out, tipped with claws, and he rips one man’s throat out before either doctor can react. He falls off the table, catches himself on hands and feet, and _roars_ , a sound so enraged it seems to shake the very walls of the room. He twists and lunges at the other doctor, and for one wild moment, he thinks he could do it, he could kill everyone here, kill his way out, _escape_.

He doesn’t even get within a foot of the other doctor before the man shoots him with something at point-blank range, three times, once in the shoulder, two more in the chest, and Peter - for all his wrath and rate of recovery - still isn’t anywhere near fast enough to dodge them.

New pain explodes in his chest, his knees buckle, his sight swims, darkness crowding into his vision, and he doesn’t even have time to decide whether it would be better or worse for the bullets to be lethal before he slips into blessed unconsciousness.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes again, everything is a hazy blur. Or maybe that’s just his mind. When he squints, all he can see is black.

He’s on his back. He tries to sit up or even just roll onto his side but his limbs don’t cooperate at all, and something in him despairs. It feels like moving through a dream, except dreams don’t hurt, and every breath he takes right now is a struggle.

Something touches his shoulder, and it makes him flinch, a shameful whine slipping out before he can stop it. The pressure stays, gentle but insistent, and eventually the fog clouding Peter’s mind parts just enough for him to recognize the worn mattress under his back and connect that with his cell.

And with its other occupant.

Peter moves again, except this time it’s in an effort to push himself towards the familiar body lying next to his, Stiles’ cheek already resting against his shoulder, his hair tickling Peter’s jaw. He manages to let his head loll to one side and press his own scarred cheek to Stiles’ head.

He knows he’s done something stupid. Knows he’s lost any element of surprise he ever had. But Stiles is here, and Peter’s so damn tired. It’s easy to simply let go and drift back into the muddled haze of his mind.

 

* * *

 

He wakes. He sleeps. Wakes again. Sleeps some more. It’s actually a lot like how he’d been during the coma, except now Stiles nudges him out of bed once or twice a day to use the toilet in the corner and to drink some water. The lack of a catheter at least is something to be grateful for, but the rest of the time, he’s usually too out of it to actively feel much of anything.

His body does adjust though. As with any drug, it becomes a little less effective the more often it’s used, and eventually, Peter is able to stay awake for longer periods of time and even sit up in bed, propped against the wall, bleary but aware.

Today, as he does every day, Stiles has migrated over to Peter’s cot and tucked himself beside him.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, voice as rough as it was the first time he spoke after waking from his coma. “I think- I can’t even shift anymore.”

He senses more than sees Stiles’ grimace, but he feels the boy shrug as well. “You’ll get better. The docs probably won’t up your dosage, they just want to keep you weak long enough to find another way to stop you from shifting, cuz you know, bright side, they can’t operate on you when you have wolfsbane in your bloodstream. They probably already have an alternative way to stop your shift because I don’t think you’re the first werewolf they’ve ever had down here, but they also just cut you open recently so they won’t do it again for a while even if they didn’t finish operating on you, and after shooting you up with wolfsbane, it’s just less work for them to keep you drugged until the next time they need you, flush it out of you then, and _then_ put in whatever they have to stop a werewolf from shifting. So you know, you have until then to start growing claws again.”

Peter huffs a feeble breath of amusement. “No pressure then.”

Stiles just shrugs again and flashes a grin of his own before snuggling close again. Peter glances at him, and he almost - _almost_ \- offers: _as soon as I get enough strength back, I can get you out of that straitjacket and cuffs, and you can escape by yourself._

He doesn’t offer. He knows that even if he gets enough strength back to free Stiles, Peter isn’t going to be running any marathons after that, much less get past who knows how many guards and other obstacles in an attempted breakout. Even if Stiles can get rid of anyone who gets in their way, he isn’t strong enough to physically carry Peter out, and Peter’s pretty sure he won’t be able to navigate this maze of a prison all the way to freedom on his own.

So he knows it’s selfish to make Stiles wait, if only because there is now a real possibility that Peter isn’t ever getting out of here alive, but the thought of staying locked up in Eichen House for the rest of his life _alone_ , _without Stiles_ , is somehow even more terrifying to him than never escaping at all.

It’s selfish, certainly wrong, maybe even downright evil, but Peter’s never claimed to be a particularly good person.

And here and now, Stiles still smells content enough despite the delay in their plan. There’s a chance Peter might overcome the wolfsbane faster than either of them expects. They just need to wait.

 

* * *

 

Over the next three weeks or so, Stiles is taken out twice more for his blood. The first time he comes back, he sleeps it off within a day or so the way he always does. The second time Peter watches two guards bodily carry him back and dump him just inside the cell before leaving again, not even sparing a glance for Peter when he snarls at them.

He’s on his feet and stumbling over to Stiles as soon as the door shuts, dropping to his knees beside the crumpled heap of limbs on the floor. “Stiles? Stiles, can you hear me?”

Stiles grunts, and his eyelashes flutter briefly like he’s struggling to open his eyes, but other than that, he doesn’t move. He didn’t even have his hands to break his fall so when Peter half-lifts, half-drags him over to Stiles’ cot, he sees the shallow scrape across one cheekbone where the thin skin - already stretched over a too-sharp cheekbone - split upon impact.

Peter’s wolf seethes. Peter grits his teeth and takes Stiles’ pulse instead, hating how weak it is, how cold and still Stiles is, almost corpse-like, and how he doesn’t respond at all even when Peter gently shakes him.

He remembers how Stiles does it though - days when Peter was so drugged up and hadn’t adjusted yet that he couldn’t tell up from down, Stiles would just lie down beside him and keep him company. So that’s what Peter does after shifting Stiles into as comfortable a position as possible with that damn straitjacket in the way. The thing doesn’t allow for as much body heat as Peter would like to get through but he huddles close anyway and hopes that will help get Stiles’ temperature back up. There aren’t even any blankets in here.

Hour after hour goes by. The lights switch off, then on, then off again. Peter gets his daily wolfsbane dosage, and they’re both fed in-between. Peter almost doesn’t bother leaving Stiles’ cot even when the orderlies file in, but he scoots back over to his own at the last minute anyway. No sense giving these people more power against them than they already have, and who knows what they might do if they realize just how… attached to each other Peter and Stiles have become.

Stiles only wakes on the fourth day. A hint of colour returns to his cheeks, and he doesn’t seem quite as cold anymore. When his eyes flicker open, they take a moment to focus before fixing on Peter, and recognition sparks in them. He doesn’t say anything but he does press his face into the coarse fabric of Peter’s shirt even as he nods off again, still too weak to stay awake for long. Peter pulls him impossibly closer and redoubles his efforts, pushing himself as hard he can to force his wolf to the surface, fingers into claws, teeth into fangs.

They need to get out of here. Before one of them - or both - doesn’t come back at all.

 

* * *

 

“I think,” Peter says, voice pitched low even though they’re in their cell. “As soon as you feel up to it, I think we should try to escape.”

Stiles looks over at him from his own cot, although even that takes a moment for him to do. Peter hasn't actually realized how much more focused Stiles has been lately compared to when they first started interacting and Stiles’ mind still wandered off somewhere half the time, until now when the blood loss makes his reactions a lot slower than they should be. An exhausted pall lingers over his features, and he spends most of his time slumped on his side. He still has difficulty staying awake for longer than a few hours but at least Peter isn’t afraid the boy might actually die in his sleep anymore.

Stiles blinks hard before frowning a little. “Don’t you need more time?”

 _Yes._ “I'll manage,” Peter says as confidently as he can. “Besides, we’re not going _tomorrow_. You probably need at least another week or two before you'll be as strong as you can be. That will give me more time too.”

Stiles frowns a little longer, and he looks like he might want to argue, but a yawn interrupts him, and in the end, he only nods and puts his head back down on his mattress.

“’kay,” Stiles mumbles. “You know you better than me. We can always wait longer if you realize you need the time.”

He yawns again and nods off barely thirty seconds later. Peter studies him for a moment longer before glancing at the metal frame of his cot. He leans over and wraps a hand around a part of it that you'd have to circle around and bend over to be able to see if you're standing.

When he lets go, the metal remains unmarked.

He scowls. Not good enough. Because in two weeks, he's going to have to be able to break it in half.

 

* * *

 

Over the next twelve days, Stiles regains as much colour as he's probably capable of at this point, and his energy levels seem to be more or less back to normal after the first week.

On the night of the eighth day, after lights-out, Peter crouches at the head of his cot and rips part of his mattress in two. It's ridiculous how much effort it takes. For the average werewolf, it should've been akin to the average human ripping a tissue in half. Peter actually has to struggle for a minute before the ratty material finally tears apart.

Still, it's progress. The next night, Peter tests his strength on a piece of Stiles’ straitjacket, at the hem and small enough that Stiles assures him the orderlies won't notice even when they take him out for his turn in the showers.

“They don't check that closely anymore,” Stiles explains as Peter returns his efforts to bending their respective bed frames. He can leave faint indents now but…

“We can wait,” Stiles suggests quietly.

Peter thinks of Stiles’ bloodless face and blue lips. Thinks of his own body strapped to a metal table, next time without even a chance of escape.

“No,” Peter growls, and Stiles doesn't bring it up again.

 

* * *

 

Thirteen days in and even if Peter changes his mind and decides to wait a couple days more, the choice is taken out of his hands because their time is up. It's a shower day for Peter, and he’s just shivering out of his allotted ten minutes under the icy spray in full demeaning view of two orderlies and two guards when a doctor - judging by the scrubs and coat but not one Peter’s seen before - appears in the doorway.

“When you return 20B,” The man says in indifferent tones without even looking at Peter. “Fetch 20A to Operation 3.”

He barely waits for one of the guards to nod before he’s gone again, and Peter almost falls over when one of the orderlies comes forward and shoves him in the direction of his clothes.

“Hurry up,” The orderly commands impatiently, and Peter clumsily obeys even as he tries to think of a way out of this sudden turn of events.

He thought they would at least have a bit more time. They were actually planning on leaving tomorrow night, after lights-out, not in the middle of the day, and _right after Peter’s daily dose of wolfsbane_ too. They were fed, he was drugged, then he was hustled to the showers, and even though he’s no longer as affected by the stuff they inject into him, he’s still _weaker_ in the immediate aftermath of said injection.

He finishes pulling on his shirt, and when the guards come over to pen him in, a hand on each of his arms as they take him back to his cell, Peter puts an exaggerated sway into his steps. Anything to delay their return, to give Peter a few more seconds to think.

He can bend metal now. With some difficulty, and a bit of time, but he can. He was going to work on it for the rest of today and tomorrow, and hopefully be strong enough to snap it in two by tomorrow night. Night, when he would be able to take his time to pull Stiles’ cuffs apart.

The orderlies march off down another corridor when they reach an intersection while the guards continue partially dragging Peter along towards their destination. As they pass by the rows of cells on either side, he gets the occasional glimpse of the shadows of his fellow inmates. They turn a corner, and Peter’s walked these halls enough times to know his cell is just ahead.

They’re out of time.

They reach his cell. One guard stations himself outside the first door as the other shoves Peter inside. The door clangs shut behind them, and the remaining guard steps away from Peter and reaches for the second door, unlocking it with bored familiarity.

Peter looks up, and through the glass, Stiles is already staring back, attention caught no doubt by the glow in Peter’s eyes.

“Insi-” is all the guard manages to say before Peter takes two steps forward and rips his throat out. The man staggers, gurgling wetly and clutching at his throat before crumpling to the ground, blood spilling across the cement.

“Peter!” Stiles hisses, rolling out of bed and onto his feet with the grace of someone long since used to not having the use of his arms for balance. “What are you-”

“We have to go,” Peter cuts in, catching the glass door before it can swing shut even as Stiles makes his way over. “They’re going to draw your blood again. We have to leave now.”

It’s too late for any other option anyway, and Stiles knows it too if the swift glance he gives the body on the floor is anything to go by. Then he looks back at Peter, and his eyes suddenly seem to burn that much brighter. He doesn’t say anything but he angles himself at Peter, and Peter doesn’t hesitate to hook his claws into the front of Stiles’ straitjacket and _pull_.

He has to brace his feet and force his arms to work the way he wants them to. He can feel the minute tremble in his muscles but he forces himself past it and rips the straitjacket right down the middle.

The pieces of fabric fall to the ground with consecutive thumps, and for a moment, Peter is left staring at two pale arms, one crossed over the other, even whiter than the rest of Stiles, with visible blue veins like lines of bruising, and skinny enough to seem starved. His hands are the same, bony and frail, and around his forearms is a pair of smooth black shackles, overlapped and chained together.

Nothing about what Peter sees looks particularly dangerous. He almost expected claws, or strange-coloured skin perhaps, something to indicate the innate magic Stiles had told him about. But they're plain, normal, human hands, lack of sunlight and proper nourishment aside, and for a terrified second, Peter wonders what would happen to them if Stiles _can't_ do what he says he can. If it's all been just in his head.

“ _Peter,_ ” Stiles says, and something in his voice makes Peter’s gaze snap back up. Stiles is staring at him, unblinking and still, and despite the brightness of his eyes, his expression is the kind of dark even Peter wouldn't provoke without very good cause. The boy extends his arms as much as the shackles allow, and his next words can't be mistaken as anything but a command. “Break them. _Now. You_ _said_.”

It would take a denser man than Peter to disobey, even if he had any inclination to do so.

There’s no room to slot his fingers between flesh and metal, and the shackles aren’t thick enough for him to get any purchase by grasping at just those.

“It doesn’t _matter_ , cut me open if you have to, just _get them off!_ ” Stiles snaps abruptly, taking so forceful a step forward that Peter has to take a step back, and before their very eyes, a trail of smoke begins rising from the manacles.

Peter freezes for a single moment, then - with a muttered curse - he pops his claws again, finds the seam where metal is clasped tight against the back of Stiles’ forearm, and then digs his claws in.

He tries not to go too deep, just deep enough to get his fingers hooked behind one of the cuffs, but of course blood runs anyway, dripping to the floor at a faster and faster rate the further Peter pushes. Stiles doesn’t make a sound though, and when Peter spares another glance at his face, there’s only a feverish sort of intensity set in his features, eyes never wavering from where Peter is wrestling with the shackles.

Peter returns to the task at hand, ignoring the blood and yanking at the cuff once, twice, again and again. He grits his teeth, adjusts his stance, and yanks once more, this time drawing it out, prying at the metal, trying to find some kind of give.

But his strength gives out first, and it leaves him panting and woozy-headed even as the beginnings of dread and panic set in. He’s… not strong enough. Not as he is, with wolfsbane in his bloodstream. He can’t even put a dent in this, much less-

“Peter-”

“I _can’t!_ ” He snarls back. “Don’t you think I’d do it if I-”

“And if you don’t, you’ll die here,” Stiles cuts him off, and the way he looks at Peter now, it’s- it’s the _meanest_ Peter’s ever seen him, because even in all his bouts of madness, Stiles has only ever laughed upon the mention of his mother’s abuse and laughed too upon the retelling of his father’s abandonment, never raged at them or swore vengeance of his own, and so Peter’s never thought him capable of cruelty quite like this. But a sneer curls dark at his lips now, and something ugly and derisive lurks in the flash of his teeth, sharp enough to cut. And cut he does. “I thought you wanted revenge? If you’re too weak to even do this, it’s no wonder your family kicked the bucket on your watch-”

Peter _roars_. White-hot rage crashes into him all at once, knotting itself like barbed wire inside him, biting and terrible, and between one blink and the next, his arms flex, his muscles burn, and with a screeching crack, the shackle between his hands twists apart.

The next several seconds happen in a series of almost simultaneous snapshots:

One - Peter shakily unlocks his fingers, and the two now useless chunks of metal clatter to the ground.

Two - the outer door slams open, the click of the safety of a gun reaches Peter’s ears, and the guard who barges in has enough time to shout, “Hey! On your knees! And hands where I can see-!”

And three - a giggle, still so jarring no matter how many times Peter’s heard it, erupts from between Stiles’ lips. The boy’s head is bowed, and his hands - no longer chained together but one still shackled, the other bloodied and rubbed raw - hang limp at his sides.

Peter only has time to wonder frantically how he’s going to get the other cuff off before the guard shoots them both before that thought is dismissed as inconsequential, because then, Stiles looks up.

Stiles looks up, a mad grin slicing his face wide, and the gold of his eyes has swallowed his pupils whole. His hands come up, and Peter gets a split second to take in the way they’re glowing - light that’s as gold as his eyes, and shimmering like a heat wave as it pours down both his forearms and pools in his hands - and then he throws himself to the ground just as the entire room goes supernova with Stiles at its epicenter.

It’s countless seconds later when Peter manages to sit up, trying to blink his blurred vision back into focus, coughing from the dust hanging in the air all around him. He looks in the direction of the door - and realizes there _is_ no door. Either of them. Or the wall or glass they were built into for that matter. And there isn’t even rubble left. If not for the ragged, crumbling edges, Peter would’ve thought they’d simply disappeared. As it is, it slowly occurs to him that the light - that _Stiles_ \- has literally disintegrated everything in front of him instead.

Including both guards, because even the body on the floor is no longer there, leaving nothing but a pool of blood behind.

Peter takes a breath and hauls himself to his feet, swaying a little before steadying himself with a hand on the - still intact - wall beside him. There’s an alarm going off somewhere, everything is still so _dusty_ , and Stiles is- Stiles is gone.

_No._

He staggers his way out of the cell, his wolf howling in his ears, and something like fear and desperation putting ice in his gut, followed by the bitter disbelief of betrayal. He stumbles into the hall, dizzy with exhaustion from using strength he didn’t really have but that his brief bout of anger gave him the illusion of possessing. He tries to squint through all the dust, tries to find Stiles, but all he can make out are more cell doors and lights flickering overhead. He coughs again, more than once, and the force of them almost makes his knees buckle.

He has to- He has to get out. He can hear - just barely - boots against cement, and shouts ringing off the walls in muffled echoes, somewhere in the distance. More guards must be coming, with tasers and guns and drugs, and he knows, he _knows_ , if he’s caught this time, the only way he’s ever getting out again is in a body bag. And even that’s debatable - after all, even a corpse’s body parts are worth something one last time.

He pushes off the wall and takes an unsteady step in the direction of where he’s pretty sure stairs leading up will be. It’s in the opposite direction of the showers and operation rooms at least, and surely those wouldn’t be built so close to a potential escape route.

Still, the breakout was always going to be risky, even with Stiles’ help.

 _And Peter doesn't even have that anymore, does he? He should've known- He_ did _know-_

He gets another five steps before he falls to his hands and knees, no longer able to stay upright as he coughs violently, every breath he takes - no matter how shallow - feeling like it's coating his lungs with-

Realization hits him hard, and when he spits off to the side, there's only a dim sense of horror upon seeing the black tar-like substance now staining the floor.

The walls. The dust. Everything is infused with mountain ash and wolfsbane, and Peter’s been breathing it in for going on five minutes now.

 _I'm going to die here_ is his next thought, distant and resigned, and he almost wants to laugh, because is this what his life was always going to amount to? A dirty secret in the bowels of a monster’s lair, forsaken by his family and forgotten by the world?

Darkness creeps into the edges of his vision, his arms shake with the effort of holding himself up, and he tips, sideways, the floor rushing up to meet him-

He jerks to a stop, and it takes him a moment to realize he hasn’t hit the ground after all because-

Because there is a hand around his upper arm, another on his opposite shoulder, and when he musters up enough strength to look up, bewildered, it is Stiles’ face that swims into focus.

_What-_

“Peter!” Stiles calls out, urgent and loud, golden eyes searching his. “Come on! We have to go!”

_What are you doing here?_

“Peter! Can you hear me? I thought the wolfsbane wasn’t that bad by now!”

_Why are you here?_

“Peter? At least say something!”

_Did you..._

“ _Peter!_ ”

_...come back for me?_

“Pe-”

“You came back,” Peter croaks out, and Stiles falls silent, brow furrowed in confusion. Peter doesn’t even realize he’s clutching at Stiles’ shirt, at his arm, at anything he can reach, until Stiles lets go of his shoulder, only to throw an arm around him in an uncertain hug, clumsy, like he’s forgotten how and only remembers the gesture from a book or word of mouth. Or perhaps from all the times Peter’s curled around him in their cell.

Peter doesn’t care. He just clings harder, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Stiles is really here, that he hadn’t escaped on his own even though Peter’s very much deadweight and little else right now.

“I cleared the hall up ahead,” Stiles is telling him, retrieving his arm in favour of trying to tug Peter to his feet. “So we should start moving. Come on, can you stand?”

“You came back,” Peter repeats dumbly, although he does try to get his feet back under him. It doesn’t really work; he’s shaking too much.

Stiles makes a strained noise before folding under Peter’s weight and lowering him back to the floor, not strong enough to hold up a grown werewolf, even a less than healthy one.

“What?” Stiles mutters distractedly, checking over his shoulder before turning back to Peter, frowning even harder now. “Well duh. You’re still here.”

Peter just... stares at him, not knowing what to say or how to respond, because he was so _sure_ that even Stiles would-

Hands grapple at his sides again, trying in vain to hoist him to his feet, and that at least knocks Peter out of his stupor and back to his present condition.

“I can’t,” Peter wheezes out, another series of coughs wracking his body. “I- The walls - they had mountain ash and wolfsbane mixed into it, and I’ve breathed in too much of the dust already-”

Stiles goes still, and it’s instinct for Peter to think _this is it, he’ll leave_ , because it’s one thing to come back for Peter when he could at least walk, it’s quite another when he’s pretty much on the verge of passing out.

_Stiles still came back though, at least the once, and if Peter’s honest, he didn't think Stiles would do even that much, not for him, not with easier options available. But he did, he's here, and that’s- that’s enough to banish the previous sense of betrayal, enough too for Peter to let him go now without-_

“Peter?”

Peter blinks sluggishly and opens his mouth to tell him to escape while he still had the chance because they both know Peter’s not capable of going anywhere, not anymore, and Stiles is just wasting time staying here.

“Hey,” Hands come up to frame Peter’s face, and the bright intensity of Stiles’ gaze stalls Peter’s words. Stiles looks pensive, focus turned inward even as he gnaws on his bottom lip the way he does when he’s thinking hard about something. And then his attention shifts to Peter again, the contemplative expression from before replaced by a strange determination. “Peter, I need you to trust me.”

Peter. Peter hasn't trusted anyone in a long, long time. Even just two minutes ago, he would've said there was no one in the world worth trusting.

But _Stiles came back_ , and Peter is nodding before it's even really a conscious decision in his mind.

Stiles smiles at him then, quick and fae, and Peter feels it - heat, from the palms still cradling his face, and it's only a combination of the poison in his body and the echo of Stiles’ request that stops him from jerking away.

Still, fear tightens its grip on his heart when Stiles’ hands only get hotter, and gold light soon obscures his sight. He chokes on a whimper, wondering if Stiles is going to burn him, but then-

Later, he'll think back and compare the what happens next to swallowing a hot drink on a cold day, with an added dose or ten of espresso thrown in, magnified by a hundred. In that moment however, for a single eternity suspended in swirling fields of light, Peter _feels_ the surge of power that courses through him like a flood, single-minded and relentless, and it touches every part of his body, leaving even the very tips of his fingers and toes suffused in warmth. It does not hurt, and he almost feels like he’s floating away the longer whatever Stiles is doing affects him.

But then, between one exhale he isn’t truly aware of and the next inhale he draws, the golden light comes to a quivering standstill before a sound like glass breaking chimes through the air. A moment after that, the world shatters into splinters of sunlight, and Peter’s next gasping breath is like that first sweet gulp of air after too long spent underwater.

He feels clear-headed, he realizes as the cold corrupt halls of Eichen House reform around him, light and refreshed in a way he hasn’t been for almost longer than he can remember. The aches in his joints are gone, he can think again, and when he breathes in, it no longer feels as if a thick toxic sludge is coating his insides.

He looks at Stiles, still stooped over in front of him, his hands dimmed but still glowing as he takes Peter’s own hands and pulls him up again. This time, Peter finds his footing easily, and when he stands, the hall doesn’t spin.

“What did you do?” He breathes, flexing his hands, delighting in the ease of which his claws come out.

Stiles steps back, waving a hand that leaves a trail of golden sparks in its wake. “I burned it out,” He says simply, like he hasn’t just performed a miracle. “The stuff in your body that was wrong. I just-” He shrugs. “I burned it all out. I wasn’t sure if I could do it but-”

He yelps when Peter reels him back in and proceeds to aggressively scent him, rubbing his cheek against Stiles’, ignoring the huffy complaint about his beard. Stiles isn’t pulling away so Peter takes that as permission to continue.

“ _Thank you,_ ” Peter says fervently, and for all that he’s never been one to thank anybody, the words still seem far too inadequate because he’s never meant anything more.

Stiles shrugs again, cheeks turning a charming pink, and - quite unbidden - it occurs to Peter that he would very much like to tease out such a blush again, certainly more than once.

But that’s something to consider later because Peter can hear heartbeats coming closer, and Stiles seems to sense the approaching guards too because his features smooth back out to that odd blankness from before even as his eyes flare bright once more.

Peter opens his mouth to suggest they start running, only to pause when movement catches his eye from the right. At this angle, standing where he is, he can just make out one of the other prisoners in this place through the window in one of the prison doors. It’s a man, maybe slightly younger than Peter in appearance with pitch-black eyes and dark hair and haggard features that nevertheless still hint at an aristocratic mien, and he’s waving his arms at them, saying something too if the way his mouth is moving despite the walls dividing them is anything to go by.

Peter considers just leaving him there. He doesn’t know him, or any of these people, and his top - and really only - priority is himself and Stiles. But a rare sympathy tugs at him, and when he looks at Stiles, the boy has already followed his gaze, head tilted like a curious bird as he observes their fellow inmate. Peter says nothing - it’s Stiles’ power, and so it is his prerogative, what he decides to do.

In the end, Stiles shrugs, his right hand comes up, and with a twist of his wrist that gathers light into his palm, and then a throwing motion, he sends a bright yellow bolt of power at the door and attached wall. Peter watches, fascinated, as it hits the solid surface and seeps into the metal and cement, spreading like a thick swarm of fireflies, and within seconds, the wall crumbles to dust before them.

Peter grins at the display. They make their way over to the cell, and inside, the man has backed up a few steps on the other side of the glass wall, peering at Stiles with cautious respect, but he looks at both of them when he speaks.

“I am Auguste of the Durand Coven,” He says quietly, clearly not wasting time beating around the bush. Peter catches a glimpse of fangs in his mouth as he continues. “I was captured only five years ago; my coven is sure to still be looking for me. If you free me, I swear on the blood of my Sire that we will honour such a debt for as long as it takes you or your line to call it in.”

Stiles blinks, then looks at Peter, who takes in the grey tint of the man’s skin, and - with new understanding - the black eyes.

“Vampire,” He tells Stiles. “The Durand Coven is old and they tend to keep to themselves, but they’re also known for their… self-control the few times they’ve interacted with other people. This one’s hungry though.”

Auguste’s expression tightens a little but there’s a forced, almost obstinate equilibrium in him that even Peter grudgingly finds impressive.

“I retain adequate control over my faculties,” The vampire promises. “I will not attack you.”

Peter studies him carefully. He’s inclined to believe it, considering how coherent he still is. Or at least he won’t attack them because he’s gone completely feral. Whether or not he _chooses_ to is another matter. Peter glances at Stiles again, who’s squinting quizzically at both of them.

“Why would I need a vampire coven on speed-dial?” He wonders out loud, and Peter snorts.

“It could be useful,” He admits, keeping one eye on the way Auguste tenses, something pinched and borderline desperate tucked away in the shadows of his features.

Stiles just shrugs. “Whatever. But y’know, I could just free everybody.”

Peter startles. In his cell, Auguste straightens, equally surprised.

Everybody? And if someone _is_ feral? They could-

“Stiles,” He starts, but Stiles has already turned away, amber gold light rushing down his arms again, so condensed they almost seem to coalesce into solid, twin suns in the palms of his hands.

“This place is...” Stiles pauses, then shrugs, moving back into the hall. “This place is not nice.”

Peter sighs but doesn’t protest. Well, Stiles isn’t wrong, and who knows - maybe a few others will feel obliged to return the favour in some way one day.

“Best hurry,” He calls out instead, moving off to one side, although he trusts Stiles not to accidentally hurt him. Considering the boy has enough control to destroy every last molecule of wolfsbane in his body, along with whatever they were drugging him with, without touching anything else, Peter isn’t worried. “The guards are coming.”

In the middle of the hallway, Stiles nods but doesn’t turn back. He stares down the length of the hall, eyes gone distant as if his mind is somewhere far away. Then he glances down at his hands, and without hesitation, he crouches and slaps them both against the floor.

Peter has to shield his eyes as a noiseless explosion seems to take place, light bursting every which way, bouncing across the floor at lightning speed and climbing the walls as soon as it touches them. The building groans, and a strange sound akin to thousands of rustling birds’ wings follows, cacophonic as a full symphony, before light and noise both disappear in the next moment, taking the walls of every cell in the vicinity with them.

A breath, a beat, and then, “Freeze!” Three guards round the corner, guns already raised, fingers on the triggers, but before Stiles can lift his hands again or Peter can lunge forward, the guards’ own shadows writhe and mesh together before rising behind them, warping into something large and hungry and Eldritch, its maw yawning open and holding still for all of a heartbeat before it plunges down and swallows the guards - clothes and weapons, flesh and bone all - whole.

Peter skids to a stop, instinctively grabbing Stiles and shoving the boy behind him as the shadow puddles to the ground again, and only now does Peter notice the much longer shadow stretching between it and one of the open cells. From its black depths, a woman rises, dark-skinned with a tangle of wild black hair around her head and white pupiless eyes that turn to stare in their direction. Peter bristles, but all she does is incline her head before turning again and gliding away, still ankle-deep in her shadows.

As if on cue, people begin trickling out of their cells, limping, gaunt, some of them still bound in cuffs or collars, but making for their nearest bid for freedom as soon as they realize they have a chance to escape.

Not all of them are humanoid beings either. A majority of them could pass for human but quite a few are either visibly part animal of some kind, or akin to the woman from earlier, strange in appearance or shape or size. All of them - slowly at first, then a stampede - bolt down the hall.

“Peter?”

Peter glances back and nods. “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Somehow, at least a few of Eichen House’s residents seem to know the way out, or at least one way out, and everyone else is quick to follow. ‘Everyone else’ being anyone capable of running, walking, flying, or even crawling out of there, because apparently Stiles didn't just destroy one hallway’s worth of cells; he destroyed them _all_.

They don't see anymore guards as they climb floor after floor. Or, they do, but most are already dead or at least being killed with extreme prejudice by the time Stiles and Peter get there. All around them, their fellow inmates take great vindictive delight in dealing with any of their tormentors who are still stupid enough to try and rush at them.

Peter counts five floors before they reach the ground floor where people are screaming and cowering at the sight of all the monsters pouring up from a basement nobody knew was there, save the people who ran it.

Peter ignores them all, ushering Stiles to a side door opposite of where everybody else is going - a janitor’s exit beside a supplies closet - and one thrust of his palm breaks the flimsy lock. He finds himself pushed back by more mountain ash but Stiles steps forward again, and another wave of his hand puts a huge crack in the building’s outermost walls that subsequently lets Peter cross the threshold.

It is mid-afternoon. The skies are mostly overcast. Judging by the trees, it looks like late winter or very early spring.

Peter has never appreciated the sight of his hometown quite as much as he does now.

“Peter?”

Peter stiffens, then turns sharply to face Stiles, who's shifting from foot to foot just inside the doorway, and he somehow looks more washed out now than he did beneath the harsh fluorescent lights underground.

Peter’s at his side in a heartbeat. “Stiles? Are you alright?”

Stiles squints at him, and he looks more boy in this moment than the overpowered being from before who pretty much single-handedly broke them out of Eichen House.

“Where do we go now?” He asks in lieu of an answer, and Peter frowns but doesn't press. For now. Instead, he glances around, summoning to mind his family’s lands.

“The Preserve,” Peter decides. “The main house burnt down, and I don't know if it's been rebuilt but the guest cabins in the woods should still be intact. And there are a few that require either supernatural balance, wings, or some heavy-duty climbing equipment to reach, so once we get to one of them, we should be able to rest.”

Stiles nods, twitching when Peter reaches out and promptly scoops him up into his arms. The boy is both smaller and lighter than Peter so it’s no trouble at all to run with him.

“Peter!”

“Hush,” Peter murmurs as he lopes off towards the cover of the closest treeline. It’ll take a bit longer, looping around through the woods instead of just cutting straight through town, but the latter obviously isn’t an option at all. He glances down at Stiles, who looks a mix of confused and petulant even though he doesn’t fight Peter’s grip on him.

“I’m a werewolf, I can make the run faster and easier even while carrying you,” Peter explains. “Besides, I should pull my own weight in our jailbreak, shouldn’t I?”

Stiles remains a little tense for a while longer before slowly relaxing against Peter’s chest. His nose scrunches a little though as he points out, “You did. You freed me.” He flushes a little, and it’s shame that colours his scent this time instead of the endearing embarrassment from earlier. “I didn’t mean to say those things, back in the cell. Or, um, I _did_ mean to say it, I just… didn’t mean _it_. Sorry. I just wanted to get you angry.”

Peter sighs and slows just long enough to drop an absent kiss to Stiles’ temple, smirking a little when Stiles turns even redder. “I realized that, yes. Don’t worry about it, Stiles. It’s fine. It got us out of there. That’s what matters.”

Stiles makes a noncommittal sound and doesn’t say anything else. His hands aren’t throwing light around anymore, and after a moment, he shuts his eyes and turns his face into Peter’s chest.

Peter doesn’t disturb him. After pretty much destroying a veritable fortress of a prison, Stiles deserves the rest.

 

* * *

 

By the time they reach the cabin Peter was aiming for, exhaustion is setting in again, and Stiles is asleep in his arms. He digs up the key from a hollowed out tile along the stone path leading up to the door and lets them in. The air inside is stale, and any scents belonging to his family are long faded, but it’s dry and devoid of people, and the familiar interior still leaves Peter standing in the doorway for a long minute, swallowing down the tightness in his throat.

Then he shuts the door behind them, locking it securely before making his way into one of the bedrooms.

It’s like looking at a snapshot of his past. Everything is still where they left it since their last camping trip in this part of the Preserve - the queen-sized bed, the nightstand, the portable lamps in the corner, the heavy wooden chest where the extra linens are stored. Peter carefully sets Stiles down on the bed, and when he straightens again, he takes a moment to simply study the boy. Still dead asleep, his near-skeletal arms - stained with blood from where Peter’s claws cut into him earlier but, oddly enough, the gouges already scabbed over even though Stiles never mentioned an enhanced healing factor, although Peter’s hardly complaining - folded around himself in a loose imitation of a hug as if he's so used to the straitjacket that even without it, this position is what he's most comfortable with.

Peter sighs and moves away to hunt down some clothes. There should still be something left here that somebody forgot or didn't bother packing up, and anything is better than their prison garb.

 

* * *

 

There's no electricity or plumbing out here but there is a river running past the cabin, out back. Peter gives himself a thorough scrub before filling a kettle he found and taking that back inside. There’s an indoor fire pit that Peter manages to light after several deep breaths and half a box of matches that makes his hands shake. Stiles can’t go diving into the river at this time of the year though, with the noticeable chill in the air, even if it is California.

He gets the fire going and puts the kettle on. It’s all charcoal and drywood so at least he doesn’t have to worry about smoke. If the way he checks to make sure the flames don’t spread is borderline obsessive, well, nobody’s around to call him out on it.

It takes a while, and several trips back out with the kettle, but eventually, he does manage to fill a basin with a decent amount of hot water, and it’s with more than a little relief that he puts out the fire once he doesn’t need it anymore.

“Stiles,” Peter gives the boy’s shoulder a gentle shake. “Wake up. You probably want to get out of those clothes, and there’s water for you to at least rinse all that blood and dust off.”

Stiles mumbles something unintelligible as he looks up at him, and he looks groggy and tired, only accentuated by the bags under his eyes. He doesn’t complain though, and it only takes a bit more cajoling before he crawls out of bed and lets Peter direct him to the tub of water in the next room. Peter leaves him to it and goes to change the bedsheets instead before ducking outside again to make a circuit around their cabin, ensuring their scent trails are covered up by the natural foliage just in case someone from Eichen House tries to track them down.

He wonders, briefly, what will happen now. Wonders if they’ll be wanted, or if whoever’s in charge of that godforsaken prison will consider them more trouble than they’re worth and will just let them go. It’s not like Eichen House can report them to the police, not with how illegal their operation had to be, never mind the supernatural angle. Or can they? What if he and Stiles are still registered as patients with the psych ward upstairs, and they’re now escapees of an asylum instead of a prison? And even if they won’t do that, there’s always hunters, and always hunters who would approve of what the doctors were doing, would agree that Eichen House’s depravity was all supernatural creatures are good for and might be perfectly willing to track down any fugitives for that place. Who knows, maybe some hunters are already in the know, and Eichen House is where they deliver some of the creatures they hunt. Peter certainly wouldn’t be surprised.

Still, even if hunters do get involved, there’s no reason for them to target Peter and Stiles specifically. That’s one benefit Peter didn’t consider earlier - Stiles releasing all the other inmates means attention will be divided instead of focused on them, and surely there are higher priorities than a mere werewolf and a child they could barely control.

He wonders too if this will finally be what reveals the supernatural world to the ignorant humans. That many strange-looking escapees - it might be explained away as some kind of gas leak or hallucinogen or experimental drug gone awry, but it could just as easily be taken at face-value.

Then again, humanity in general has always excelled at burying their heads in the sand when confronted with something they don’t want to look too closely at.

All of that is a distant concern though. Right now, all Peter cares about is staying safe and hidden so they can both get some real rest for the first time in years.

Patrol finished, Peter heads back inside and finds Stiles already dressed again, this time in the shorts and t-shirt Peter left out for him. They’re Derek’s, he thinks, but they’re too big on Stiles even though Stiles is about the same age as when Peter’s nephew last wore them. Still, they’re clean, and Stiles doesn’t seem to mind, already back in bed on top of the covers. Peter tugs those out from under the boy and climbs in as well before pulling them back over both of them. Stiles stirs for a moment, blinking with an air of puzzlement at the blankets before burrowing into Peter’s side.

Peter cracks a yawn and drapes a possessive arm over Stiles. They’re both fast asleep within moments.

 

* * *

 

When Peter wakes again, it’s to flickering light beyond his eyelids. He opens them groggily, momentarily disoriented because he can’t smell the usual disinfectant and sterility that went hand in hand with blood and misery, but at the same time, he can’t quite muster up any wariness either.

He’s in a bed. A proper bed. The walls around him are smooth brown wood, and he can hear chirping birds outside. Another blink and the memories flood back to the forefront of his mind - the killing, fleeing, freedom.

He hand shoots out, feeling for Stiles, only to find that side of the bed empty. He’s halfway up and searching the room before his eyes land on the chest at the foot of the bed and the boy perched on top of it, feet on the mattress, a ball of light crackling between his hands, tossed idly from palm to palm even as tendrils of gold flicker between his fingers.

Stiles himself is staring out the window, mostly blank-faced in a way that reminds Peter of those times in their cell when Stiles disappeared into his own head.

“Stiles?” Peter sits up and pushes down the covers, waiting patiently until Stiles finally turns his gaze from the window to Peter. “Are you alright? Not tired anymore?”

Stiles shrugs, and it emphasizes just how skinny he is in the shirt he’s wearing when the neckline almost slips off one shoulder. His hands go still but the light remains, swirling round and round in random mesmerizing patterns.

“I was worried,” Stiles explains. “Someone might come after us.”

Ah. “I made sure they won’t be able to,” Peter assures. At least as much as he was able.

Stiles only shrugs again and looks back out the window. Peter follows his gaze to the overcast skies outside, to the bare trees, to the cliff face Peter can just make out from where he’s sitting.

His and Stiles’ time in captivity were different. He’s known that for a while on some level. Not just because the doctors there wanted them for different reasons, but _time_ itself. Even disregarding the extra year Stiles was stuck in there, Peter - a blessing perhaps, in a twisted laugh-so-you-won’t-cry kind of way - wasn’t really _aware_ for the majority of the six years he was stuck in there. Sure, he had moments from time to time when he surfaced, more and more as he healed, and being locked in his own head was certainly no picnic, but when it came down to it, he was more or less unconscious for quite a few years, or at the very least, he could remain in the relatively safer recesses of his mind as opposed to the stark cold reality of Eichen House, and even now, most of the time, six years for him doesn’t actually feel like the full six years.

( _Sometimes, it feels like the fire happened only yesterday._ )

Stiles on the other hand was awake for every single one of those years, and not even just any years but literally a good chunk of his formative ones, time that should’ve been spent learning and developing, not locked up in a box, sleeping when he couldn’t bear to think anymore, thinking when he couldn’t bear to sleep, and not much else in-between aside from forced donations of blood because the lunatics running that prison didn’t even have the mercy to provide a book or two.

Peter can’t put into words how much he appreciates being able to breathe in the scents of the forest again, can’t describe how beautiful the world looks to him without concrete walls getting in the way. And if _he_ feels like that, he can’t imagine what Stiles must be going through right now. So if the boy wants to stay up, wants to stare out the window all day with the comfort of his powers back in his hands, who is Peter to tell him to stop?

He sighs, stretches, and then starts clambering out of bed. Might as well get up. He still feels weak, but he doesn’t notice any symptoms of withdrawal, which he supposes he has Stiles to thank for too. A run might do him some good, and… food. He should hunt. Neither of them has eaten in… well actually, they haven’t _eaten_ in years. But even the last time they were fed was sometime yesterday. He doesn’t know the exact time at the moment.

“I’m going to go hunt down something for us to eat,” He tells Stiles, who peers at him again, visibly interested now, and it chases away the impassivity from before.

“Like… a cow?” Stiles asks, the ball of light between his hands fizzling to nothing as he slips off the chest to follow Peter out of the bedroom.

“Like rabbits,” Peter corrects with some amusement. “Cows are usually found on farms, not in the wilderness.”

“Oh,” Stiles blinks, and then shakes his head like he’s pulling himself free of cobwebs. “I know that.”

Peter pauses, then turns back and runs a hand through Stiles’ hair, leaning down to scent him. His arm accidentally brushes Stiles’ glowing fingertips but they don’t burn or even emit heat at the moment, which is probably a good thing because Peter doesn’t even think to leap away.

This is Stiles. Who has proven beyond a doubt that he considers Peter important, enough not to leave him behind even when it would’ve been the smart thing to do.

“I know you do,” He murmurs. “But even if you don’t, things will come back to you, or you’ll learn. So it’s fine if you don’t.”

He feels Stiles lean against him for a moment, just a bit, and the defensive frustration leaves his scent.

“I’ve never had rabbit before,” Stiles muses, looking thoughtful when he steps back.

Peter chuckles, stripping out of his shirt and pants. Stiles doesn’t exactly stare, but he doesn’t avert his eyes either the way most normal nine-year-olds probably would’ve learned to do by then unless they were in a locker room setting or something similar. He’s probably used to seeing other people naked, and likewise, he was fine with taking off his clothes in front of Peter yesterday, both of which probably stem from all those showers taken in front of their guards and orderlies, the fucking perverts. Peter himself has sometimes had to share his ten minutes of shower time with his watchers _and_ one or two other prisoners.

They rarely made eye-contact and never spoke to each other. The guards tended to use any excuse to smack them around a few times if they thought they were wasting time on purpose or “conspiring” in some way. Needless to say, Peter preferred showering alone. Or as alone as anybody could be without any privacy, and more often than not, he was. Perhaps because he was a werewolf, and they didn’t want to chance Peter overpowering anybody if he thought he would have help getting out. Stiles on the other hand - shackled as he was - probably shared more showers than not in that cold cement box of a bathroom, under the intrusive inspection of his wardens.

God, they’d both be a psychologist’s dream come true. Or reason for early retirement. Either one is possible.

“Stay here, alright?” Peter reminds him. “Call if you need me. I’ll be close by, and I’ll be back as soon as I’m done.”

Stiles nods solemnly and watches him leave. It’s harder than Peter thought it would be, shifting into a wolf, and harder still to leave Stiles behind, even if only temporarily.

It’s nice to be able to stretch his legs but he still tries to hurry, and he never strays farther than he needs to. He catches his first rabbit about half a mile out, then two more in quick succession. There should be knives for skinning them back at the cabin. The human members of their family used to come out here too - they couldn't eat their meat raw, and it isn’t as if werewolves don’t enjoy cooked meat as well.

He thinks it’s been about half an hour when he gets back, and the first thing he smells is fire.

It happened almost like this too, before, he recalls even as he barrels into the cabin, rabbits forgotten, panic overriding common sense. He woke up, smelled the flames, and life as he knew it had ended.

“Stiles!” He shouts through a mouthful of fangs, bursting into the main living area, only to stagger to a halt when he finds Stiles crouched over the fire pit and blinking up at him with wide eyes.

“I-” Stiles bites his lip before rolling back off his knees and onto the balls of his feet, retrieving his hands from the glowing fire pit. “I wanted to help.”

Peter stares for a moment, then reminds himself to breathe. Then breathes again. The panic ebbs, quickly replaced by embarrassment, and it makes him feel foolish and stupid. Of course there’s no fire. He would’ve seen the smoke. Can flames even hurt Stiles?

“Should I put it out?” Stiles asks, still watching him.

Peter shakes his head, shrugging away the last of his shift. “No. No of course not. Getting a fire going was a good idea.” He glances over his shoulder. “I left the rabbits outside. I’ll go get them.”

He hastily retreats, taking his time with the game he caught and remembering to get dressed again before he returns to Stiles.

Stiles doesn’t bring it up, even when Peter takes a seat a careful few feet away from the fire pit. If Peter doesn’t know better, he would’ve thought Stiles didn’t even notice his earlier terror. But there’s no way Stiles missed it, and Peter’s relieved that he’s kind enough to take it in stride, or at least not prod him about it.

It doesn’t take long to skin the rabbits and cook them. Peter hesitates for a moment over whether there are any forks and knives in the cabin but Stiles simply dives right in, using his fingers to tear the meat into smaller pieces.

Right. It isn’t as if there were an abundance of eating utensils to use in Eichen House, or even the need for them. Hands either for Stiles, of course, but that’s a more instinctual jump than proper cutlery.

“It’s good,” Stiles remarks around a mouthful, sounding surprised.

Peter digs into his own portion, watching fondly as Stiles devours his. It’s nice to see him enjoy something so much. Rare too. Barring his moments of insanity, Stiles was more often subdued than not.

They’re quiet for a while as they eat the first proper meal they’ve had in years, but eventually, after licking his fingers clean (Peter nudges a napkin at him), Stiles looks up and asks, “What are we going to do now?”

Peter can’t say he hasn’t thought about it himself. They can’t hide up here forever, although considering it’s been less than twenty-four hours since they escaped, they’re probably entitled to a bit more down-time.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to start planning ahead.

“Are we...” Stiles starts, then stops, frowns, and amends, “Are you going to get your revenge now?”

Peter studies him carefully for a moment, at the way he’s systematically shredding the napkin in his hands, before shaking his head. “Not right away, no. I think our first priority should be finding out what people think has happened to us. And healing, of course.” He smiles wryly. “Decent meals and fresh air are a good start.”

Stiles nods at his hands. Peter says nothing more, and his patience is rewarded when the boy blurts out minutes later, “But what about after? What happens when you go get your revenge?”

Unspoken is the _what happens to me_ , but Peter hears it just fine anyway, and after a moment of contemplation, he figures he should probably ask, “...Do you want to go back to your dad?”

 _He_ wouldn’t. But he’s not Stiles, not so young either, so perhaps-

Light jumps between Stiles’ bony fingers, and the remains of the napkin disintegrates between his hands. Peter remains calm even as he meets the half-crazed eyes that dart between him and some unknown ghost beyond his shoulder.

“ _No,_ ” Stiles says, quiet and curt and final. Peter doesn’t press. He certainly doesn’t say anything as ridiculous as _I’m sure he’ll be sorry_ or _he’ll be so glad to see you_ , because he doesn’t know if either of those things are true, and it would be cruel to give Stiles false hope. Stiles probably wouldn’t believe him anyway.

“Well,” he says instead, “We’ll have to check in on him anyway, if only to see what he’s told people about you. But if you don’t want him to see you, then that’s fine too. And after that, if you want, you can stay with me.”

Stiles’ gaze snaps back to him, wide, and some of the crazy melts away. “Really? I can-?”

“Of course,” Peter assures, even as something inside him uncoils, replaced by a relief that probably shouldn’t be as surprising as it is. “If you want-”

“I want to,” Stiles interjects, nodding. “And I can help you, I’m strong-”

“You don’t have to though,” Peter is equally quick to assert, his mind already slotting together the pieces of a potential future for the two of them. “That’s not why I want you with me. You can, if you want, but you don’t have to. We probably won’t stay in Beacon Hills. I don’t want us anywhere near Eichen House for longer than absolutely necessary, and I doubt my family’s murderers are in this town anyway. I’ll need to track them down, which means tracking my niece and nephew down, and I _know_ they’re long gone from here. So we’ll leave, but I can get us the necessary identification papers and money, sign you up for online classes or just get you something with internet access, and you can do your own learning at your own pace, you can just… do what you want, anything you want. My revenge is my own. I don’t need you to be my weapon.”

Stiles stares unblinkingly at him for a long moment, and then he smiles, awkward and a little uncertain, but _bright_ in a way Peter’s never seen before. Genuine, and all the more beautiful because of it.

Peter doesn’t think he’d mind coaxing it out more often from now on.

 


	2. Intermission

 

Walking into public as they are - underfed, in ill-fitting clothes and no shoes - won’t help them stay under the radar. Peter can hunt enough food to get them by for now, but sooner or later, they’re going to need other necessities that will require actual money, something neither of them has on hand.

So their first stop after another full day of sleep in a proper bed is the Hale Vault.

“I left some cash in there, just in case,” Peter explains to Stiles.

“...In case you had to escape from prison and go on the run?”

“More along the lines of in case of _any_ emergency, sweetheart, but considering our situation, I wouldn’t have been very far off the mark, now would I?”

They wait until night before they leave the Preserve, creeping back into town under the cover of darkness. Peter finds a newspaper, glances at the front-page article exclaiming about an investigation into the local nuthouse for suspected illegally incarcerated patients, and then checks the date.

_January 9th, 2011._

Peter just… stares at that for a long minute, because god, it was _2005_ the last time he looked at the date. Even after finding out it’s been six years - give or take - for a while now, some part of him still can’t believe it.

It isn’t until Stiles presses into his side that he folds the newspaper up and tucks it under his arm before ushering Stiles onward towards the high school. Neither of them remarks on the date out loud.

He shows Stiles how to get into the Hale Vault.

“There should be a few extra sets of claws in here somewhere,” Peter mutters once he’s shut the door behind them again. “They work even post-mortem so my family usually kept each Alpha’s claws after they passed away. I don’t expect you’ll need them since we’ll be leaving soon, but if we end up back here later, I want you to have them in case you need somewhere to lay low.” He hesitates for a moment before pointing at the far wall. “You can use the claws over there too. That’s the tunnel that leads to our house in the Preserve. It’s… probably still blocked off by mountain ash but that shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

He turns away and makes no move to try the door himself. He doesn’t know if he ever wants to see his family home again.

Stiles’ hands light up the Vault, and Peter sets about taking stock of his family’s heirlooms and other assorted knickknacks as Stiles wanders off between the shelves. It doesn’t look like Laura has been through here at all. Everything is still fully stocked and untouched.

In the end, Peter doesn’t just dump almost all the cash in the vault into a spare bag. He takes some of the bearer bonds too, and also grabs two more duffel bags’ worth of essentials, containing everything from toiletries to food to clothes. He scrounges up a fourth bag for the books Stiles seems particularly interested in and several jars of herbs and poisons that Peter thinks might come in handy.

And of course a set of claws for Stiles, who slips it into a pocket of the oversized sweater he’s swimming in.

“Alright,” Peter says once he’s double-checked that they’ve collected everything they might need. “The school’s locker rooms aren’t far. We can take a proper shower there before changing into some of these clothes, okay?”

Stiles nods, snuffs out the light emanating from his hands, and follows Peter out of the Vault once more.

Said locker rooms haven’t changed much from when Peter was still a teenager. The lock is easy enough to pick, and then they’re in. There’s not even any cameras or alarms they have to bypass or hide from.

Or maybe that’s just in prisons. Peter’s standards are probably a little skewed at this point.

The janitors have already been through, and there’s plenty of hot water. Peter pulls out a shaving kit and a pair of scissors for himself, and then he sits Stiles down to give him a trim as well. He’s no barber but at least he can make both of them look a little less like nuthouse escapees. They get dressed, pack up, and Peter pretends he doesn’t see the way it takes Stiles three tries before he manages to tie his shoelaces.

They stop by a gas station for some snacks and drinks. The cashier stuck on the night shift has his eyes glued to his phone and doesn’t look like he would give a damn if zombies shuffled in for gatorade, so Peter doesn’t bother hurrying Stiles as the boy stares wide-eyed at all the different flavours of chips and all the bright-coloured drinks in the row of fridges. They do at least keep their faces turned away from the only camera in the corner, but they don’t leave until they’ve splurged a bit on a variety of unhealthy junk food. The vault only contained non-perishables, and those are never particularly tasty.

By the time they get back to the cabin though, they’re both drooping from exhaustion again. They may be something magical and a werewolf respectively but they’ve also spent over half a decade locked up underground. They’re actually in _better_ health than Peter expected - especially Stiles, who might be able to heal faster than a regular human but doesn’t have a werewolf’s metabolism - so whatever was in those IVs that served as meals for them were clearly keeping them at least healthy enough for their blood and organs to function properly, if only to remain useful.

Still, it’s pretty obvious that they’re still in need of rest and recovery, and so after depositing their spoils in the living area, they tumble back into bed for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

The next time Peter wakes, the sun is high in the sky, light streaming through the curtains, and Stiles is still curled against him, back against his chest, arms tucked in, sleeping.

Peter noses drowsily at a bare shoulder because Stiles is wearing one of Peter’s sleep shirts, and they’re all at least a size too big for him. They’ll have to go shopping soon. He wants Stiles to have his own things.

In the meantime though, it does give him a possessive sort of thrill to see Stiles in his clothes, and Peter is perfectly happy to luxuriate in their warm nest of blankets with Stiles pressed against him, hiding them from the world.

Them. Peter and Stiles. _Pack_.

He thinks this is the first time he’s really acknowledged it - the pack bond that’s been growing between them for months now, ever since Stiles spoke to him and Peter was capable of answering and _chose_ to answer, strengthened with every secret shared and every piece of the escape plan they cobbled together and every little comfort they offered each other freely, finally cemented when Stiles refused to leave him behind and Peter realized he could trust Stiles not to betray him.

He didn’t before. Right up until Stiles gave him irrefutable proof of his loyalty, a part of Peter always believed Stiles would leave him the moment Peter was no longer useful to him, and it shames something in him now. That’s not how you treat Pack, Peter knows. Even worse, Stiles has never once given him any real cause to doubt him, has always helped as much as he could when Peter needed him, and even trusted him to do his part when Stiles needed _him_ during their escape, even if Peter did require a little push. And yet Peter doubted him anyway. For all that Stiles isn’t a werewolf, he’s acted more like Pack than Peter has, and the very thought makes him cringe. Real Pack goes both ways after all.

So he’ll do better from now on. That’s a vow he’ll take to his grave. So long as he has any say in the matter, he’ll never give Stiles reason to think Peter might not care for him just as fiercely or would not protect him just as faithfully.

They’re Pack now. A pack of two, with no Alpha, but their pack bond is a steady solid thing tying them together, and Peter will see the world burn before he’ll let anyone take Stiles away from him.

In his arms, Stiles stirs, and Peter remembers to loosen his grip. He doesn’t want Stiles thinking he’s been strapped down or anything.

Stiles makes a sleepy questioning noise, and the room lights up briefly with the glow of Stiles’ magic before it fades away again. A moment later, he’s squirmed around to peer at Peter with an amber gold gaze.

“Peter?” His brow scrunches into the beginnings of a frown, and his eyes dart around the room. “Is something wrong?”

Peter quickly runs a soothing hand down the boy’s back. “No, of course not, sweetheart. I only just woke up myself.”

He pauses, wondering if his relatively heavy thoughts were what disturbed Stiles’ sleep. It wouldn’t be so surprising, not now with the connection formed between them.

Stiles hums something tuneless and doesn’t seem entirely convinced, but he also doesn’t push as he unfolds himself and stretches, not at all bothered by how tangled up he is with Peter.

Normal humans would find it weird, Peter knows, or even _wrong_. But to accuse either of them of being normal at this point would be utterly laughable.

Peter just leans in again and scents the boy, more than pleased when Stiles absently bares his throat and lets Peter rub his cheek over too-pale flesh, although he does squirm a bit under the scrape of Peter’s facial hair.

“What do you want to do today?” Stiles asks once Peter’s pulled back a bit.

“Well, I was thinking we could eat first, then maybe take a walk, and I’m sure you want to get your hands on one of the books.” Peter smiles when Stiles immediately perks up, but he sobers as he continues, “And then, after dinner, once it gets dark, and if you’re alright with it, we should probably head into town again and try to find out what people think happened to us six years ago. Which might mean visiting your father.”

Stiles goes still, his expression blank. Peter says nothing more, giving the boy time to think.

“He might not be Sheriff anymore,” Stiles says eventually. His scent has gone flat, not quite bitter enough to indicate resentment or upset but unhappy all the same. He only shakes his head though before rolling out of Peter’s arms, much to Peter’s disgruntlement. “But we should go anyway. I remember where my- where his house is. And he used to bring his work home with him; he had backup copies of all the cases he worked on. If he’s still the Sheriff, we might not have to raid the station for information on the fire or even Laura and Derek.”

It’s Peter’s turn to freeze, but only for a moment before a rough sound of amusement leaves him, drawing Stiles’ gaze again.

“What?”

“You _are_ a clever one, aren’t you?” Peter murmurs, grateful and overwhelmingly fond all at once. “Thank you, Stiles.”

Stiles’ nose wrinkles in confusion. “Well, I mean, if we’re gonna go there, we might as well get everything done all at once, right?”

Peter chuckles outright this time before leaning in to press a kiss to the boy’s forehead, smirking just a little when Stiles reddens under the attention. “Of course. Just… we’re there for you too. For you first. Alright?”

Stiles huffs but nods, more anxious than anything else now. “...You’ll stay with me the whole time?”

Peter scoffs. “Just try and stop me, sweetheart.”

Stiles manages a tremulous smile at that, and Peter supposes that will have to be good enough for now. There’s nothing he can say that will make visiting the father who got him locked up an experience to look forward to.

He does consider, for a moment, if they should also swing by Alan Deaton’s little pet clinic and see what kind of aid the druid might be able to offer, provided the man is still around. But… Deaton was never a proper emissary to the Hale Pack, he only lent a hand when Talia asked, and even then, half the time he was too cryptic to be any kind of helpful. He liked _Talia_ , but Peter never got the sense that the druid gave a damn about the rest of them. He played nice only because he was staying on Hale territory, and he got away with being largely useless because he somehow had Talia’s favour.

He failed to give any kind of protection to the Hales the one time they actually needed him, for wards or a forewarning or even just a fucking hand to break a mountain ash line. And after the fire, he obviously couldn’t keep Laura around, if he tried at all, which Peter doubts. If Peter were to show up at his doorstep, there’s no guarantee Deaton won’t call the police on them, or sell them out in some other way. After all, with the Hale Pack gone, Deaton was the only power left in a town sitting on a crossroads of magical ley lines.

It’s simply safer to avoid the druid altogether.

“Come on,” He says instead, tossing back the sheet and swinging his legs to the floor. “Food, then fresh air. I don’t like how skinny you are.”

“It’s not like _you’re_ Mr. Healthy either,” Stiles grumbles, but he follows Peter’s lead, and they both get ready for another day.

 

* * *

 

Night falls, and they make their way into town once more. Stiles leads the way this time, and Peter doesn’t remark about the way he seems to get lost halfway down one street, staring at the street names with a lost expression, and then finally detouring all the way to the elementary school first before he manages to get them to the Sheriff’s house.

Peter doubts it’ll be the last thing over half a decade in a cell will have taken from them.

“He’s not home,” is the first thing Stiles says once they’re lurking in the shadows of a tree across the street from an average-looking house with no lights on inside. “Cruiser’s missing.”

He trots off across the street, and Peter follows him around the house to where Stiles quickly digs into the gritty soil of a wilted potted plant beside the back door, coming back up with a key.

“A _police officer_ hides his key in one of the most common places that _everybody_ hides their keys?” Peter asks incredulously.

Stiles shrugs, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Mom started forgetting her keys when she left the house, but this plant used to be inside, right beside the key dish, so we put it outside with the spare key, and for a while, Mom at least remembered where that was. I just figured Dad forgot about it.” He wiggles the key. “And I was right.”

They slip inside. Peter couldn’t hear any heartbeats even from across the street so he’s not surprised when only shadows and the ticking of a clock greet them in return.

Peter wrinkles his nose. It smells a little like stale beer, and when they walk through the kitchen, he spies a few empty bottles in the sink.

They make their way to the study. The door isn’t locked, and the desk has paperwork scattered over it. Peter starts there, but nothing jumps out at him, just standard forms for parking tickets and half-filled reports of minor arrests and overtime budgets that Peter has no interest in.

“He doesn’t leave out the important files when he’s gone,” Stiles tells him, walking over to a large metal file cabinet in the corner instead. The drawers open easily enough but inside each of them is a second panel with the sort of combination lock you usually find on a safe.

Safe-in-a-file cabinet. Well, John Stilinski _is_ a cop.

Not that that seems to matter to Stiles. The boy stares at one of the dials for a moment, then tries a sequence of numbers. Nothing happens. But then he enters another combination, and the clunk of the lock sliding open is loud in the otherwise silent room.

“Mom’s birthday,” Stiles explains in response to Peter’s enquiring eyebrows. “Not deathday. I thought it might’ve changed after- after all these years, but it hasn’t.”

Ah. Makes sense, from what Peter has heard of the man. It’s curious though, that Stiles’ first guess would be his mother’s death, while the Sheriff would cling to a happier occasion.

…Then again, Peter supposes that makes quite a bit of sense too, all things considered.

He joins Stiles at the cabinet. The boy’s hands flutter over the drawers for a moment before tapping each one, top to bottom. “Ongoing, closed, cold.” He pulls out the second and third rack of files. “You check closed, I’ll check cold.”

Peter nods and begins thumbing through the files. “You know his filing system pretty well,” He remarks idly, eyes skipping over the labels.

Not alphabetical order. It looks like dates instead. Peter starts going through the tabs, counting backwards and estimating the year when Stiles would’ve disappeared. Surely, even if the good Sheriff didn’t notice right away, _eventually_ he would’ve realized his son was missing and an investigation would’ve been launched, right?

“Dad worked a lot at the station,” Stiles mumbles from the floor where he’s rifling through the bottom drawer. “I mean he brought copies of his work here, but only so he could work when he _was_ home, which… wasn’t that often. And Mom slept a lot when she wasn’t… She just slept a lot, and then she was at the hospital. So I spent a lot of time by myself here. And I was a curious kid, even before my mom got sick. Dad got this filing cabinet-safe cuz I had a habit of getting into stuff that I wasn’t really supposed to once I learned how to walk and read. Before, he only had his gun safe.”

He nods briefly at the desk, and Peter pauses from his search long enough to spot the smaller safe tucked in a corner of the space underneath it.

“You can open that too?”

Stiles doesn’t look up this time, but his tone is very obviously wry. “All his passwords are pretty much the same - ‘Claudia’ or her birthday.”

Peter arches an eyebrow as he digests that ridiculousness, but he only makes an acknowledging - if dubious - sound in reply before returning to the files instead. He finds the years he’s looking for - year of and the one after, depending on how long it took the Sheriff to figure out his son was missing - and begins flipping through the first few pages of each folder, scanning them for Stiles’ name.

In the end, he doesn’t find anything related to Stiles. Instead, his eyes catch on _Hale_ , on one of the thicker files, and everything stops.

Before he knows it, he’s reading the indifferently neat print on white paper, row after row of damningly apathetic words:

_‘...fire occurred at the Hale residence…’_

_‘...started at 9:15 PM…’_

_‘...after rigorous investigation, the fire was ruled an accident by insurance investigator Garrison Myers...’_

_‘...concludes that the BHFD was not guilty of delayed reaction time…’_

_‘...statements were given…’_

_‘...eight members of the family deceased due to fire and smoke inhalation, as listed below…’_

_‘Cause of Death: Electrical Malfunction.’_

Peter doesn’t even realize he’s put his claws through the file until gentle hands detangle the pages from his fingers, and then a warm body collides with his own, arms curling awkwardly around him.

Peter doesn’t question it. He hugs Stiles back probably tighter than he should, burying his nose in the boy’s hair and focusing on the scent of Pack instead of the stench of overcooked meat that he could swear still simmers under his skin.

“It wasn’t an accident,” He finally croaks. “There was _wolfsbane_. Mountain ash on the ground, in the basement, in the tunnels. It couldn’t have all burnt to ash. And Derek _knows_. Why didn’t he say anything? Laura would’ve smelled the wolfsbane, even the _hunters_ who set the fire. The fire wouldn’t have wiped out their scents. _They know_ , I _know_ they know, _why didn’t they-_ ”

And it isn’t until this moment - no matter what he told himself back in Eichen, no matter how much he already scorned Laura and Derek - that he realizes the true extent of his niece and nephew’s cowardice and betrayal. They didn’t just abandon him. They didn’t even just not speak of Derek’s unwitting part in the murders to the police, perhaps for fear of getting him in trouble. They could’ve framed it differently, thought up some other way to at least give the cops a reason to suspect arson and investigate further. Derek undoubtedly had records of phone calls and even text messages of his little tryst. He could’ve said she was harassing him. He could’ve played the victim.

But no, they didn’t even _try_. There are no records of any testimonies suggesting foul play, barely a statement from Laura confirming she was out of town at the time of the incident. Peter thought - naively - that the worst-case scenario would be the hunters getting away with it, and the case remaining unsolved. He was even expecting it.

But not _this_. The police ruled it an _accident_ , not even- god, not even a _month_ after the fire took place. Laura and Derek did half the hunters’ job for them, covering up what those monsters did to their _family_ , and _they didn’t give a shit_.

“They _closed the case-_ ”

“Then we’ll get it reopened,” Stiles cuts in, not at all afraid as he meets Peter’s glowing gaze, not even twitching under the claws at his back, not at all put-off by the helpless guttural snarl rumbling in Peter’s chest.

“We’ll get it reopened, or we’ll hunt down everyone responsible ourselves,” Stiles continues fiercely. “And we’ll make them pay one way or another. Just like you told me, remember? Who cares what people think now? By the time we’re finished, the bastards who killed your family will be sorry they ever even _thought_ about going after them! It won’t bring your family back, but everybody will know how horrible they are, and you’ll be the one to come out on top. You’ll have your revenge, and your pack will have their justice, and every moment you live after that, you’ll be spiting every last one of them for thinking you didn’t deserve to live just because of what you are.”

It rings in Peter’s ears, Stiles’ words, a reminder and a vow and an assurance all at once. It helps him breathe, helps him pull his wolf back, sheathing his claws and soothing the rage pumping through his veins even as he pulls Stiles impossibly closer.

 _This boy_ , he thinks fervently, and refuses to imagine where he would be now without him.

“ _We’ll_ come out on top,” Peter murmurs at last, voice still rough with a lingering growl. “I hope you don’t think I’m ever letting you go, sweetheart.”

Stiles’ scent sweetens with pleasure, as it does every time Peter reaffirms the fact that he’ll never leave him behind.

That’s fine. Peter doesn’t mind saying it - and _proving_ it - for the rest of their lives.

“I’m sorry,” He apologizes next, reluctantly distangling them. “We should be looking for a file on you-”

Stiles actually rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dumb, Peter. We’re here for both of us. Besides,” He produces another file and grins like he wants to do anything but. “I already found mine.”

Peter looks sharply at the file. There’s a date on the tab, but Stiles’ name is also scribbled there. He looks back at Stiles. “Do you want to read it?”

Stiles is silent for a moment. “...Can we read it back at the cabin?”

Peter nods, bending down to pick up his own file. “I’ll have to take mine too anyway. There’s not much of a reason for the Sheriff to be digging up the Hale case right now, but if he does,” He wryly eyes the tears in the paper. “The claw marks are a bit of a giveaway that someone’s been here.”

He spares a second more to glance down at one of the lines in the report.

_‘Peter Hale was taken to the hospital but succumbed to his injuries thirteen days after surgery and subsequent coma.’_

Thirteen days. Apparently, Laura and Derek couldn’t even wait two weeks before culling him from the pack.

Peter takes a deep breath, and then closes the folder and looks around. “Is there a photocopier here?” His eyes land on the printer. “It might be safer if we don’t want your father noticing someone’s been through his office. He might pull your file after the Eichen House breakout.”

But Stiles is already shaking his head as he turns to close up the cabinet. “It doesn’t matter. I mean, it’s been a couple days since we got out and he hasn’t pulled it yet, so he probably won’t. But also, he has the originals at the station. If he can’t find whatever he’s looking for here, he’ll just assume he forgot it at work or mixed it up with some other files somewhere because he was drunk.”

His tone is as matter-of-fact as it can get, and Peter has to wonder just how often the Sheriff indulged too excessively in alcohol around his son for it to become routine.

The more he hears about this man, the less respect he has for him. Or perhaps _more contempt_ would be a better way to put it. Peter never had any respect for him to begin with. The hunters probably did a good job at hiding all evidence of their crimes, and Laura and Derek certainly didn’t help, but still…

John Stilinski was responsible for closing the Hale case, and some part of Peter will never forgive him for that. Add that on top of the way he treated Stiles, and Peter will have no qualms putting his claws through the man’s throat if he ever proves to be a threat to either of them.

“Let’s go then,” Peter says, tucking both files under his arm before hesitating briefly. “Do you want to look around?”

They exit the study and stop at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor before Stiles answers. “...I want to see my room.”

 _I want to see if my dad got rid of it_ , he doesn’t say, but Peter hears him anyway.

They trek upstairs, bypassing the first closed door. Peter assumes it’s a guest bedroom. The second on the right is shut as well but the knob turns easily enough when Stiles twists it.

The door swings open with a small creak.

It’s dusty, is the first thing Peter notices. He almost sneezes as they step inside. Then he sees the boxes stacked inside, mostly on the floor but a few on the desk in the corner as well.

It looks like a storage room. The walls are bare, the bed by the far wall’s been stripped, there are no toys, and the books on the shelves don’t look like they’ve been touched in years. The place is silent in a way that seems more permanent than the rest of the house, like a snapshot of time left behind and forgotten.

Stiles pads inside, expression chillingly blank. He stops in the middle of the room, looks around, at the drawn curtains, the bare mattress, the empty desk, a glimpse of what looks to be clothes in one of the boxes. A whole life packed away and shoved out of sight and out of mind.

“Stiles-” Peter starts and gets no further. He only gets a last glimpse of wild gold eyes before light sears across the entire room like a miniature sun exploding.

Peter’s calculating the quickest way out of the house and back into the woods even before he finishes regaining his sight. The room is - unsurprisingly, a mess of crumbling boxes and charred wood, and Peter actually has to back up a step when he gets a memory flash of his own house burning away all those years ago. Soot-streaked floorboards and ash-stained blue walls now decorate the bedroom, and it may be the middle of the night, but if any neighbours were up for a trip to the bathroom or a snack, there’s no way they could’ve missed the light.

“Stiles,” He says again quietly, carefully making his way inside to stand behind the boy, smoothing hands over hunched shoulders and not hesitating at all before gently pulling him into a hug. A few gold sparks dance over Peter’s forearms but fade away to nothing seconds later.

“There’s no point trying to hide the fact that we’ve been here,” Peter continues softly. “It doesn’t look like your father’s thrown any of your things away, just packed it up, so is there anything you want to take? We’ll have to be quick but we might as well be thorough.”

Stiles’ expression twists a little. “There’s nothing-” Stops, catches sight of Peter’s stern frown, and bites his lip in thought. “...I had a quilt, here,” He gestures at the end of his bed. “Mama made it for me. A long time ago.”

Peter nods. “Alright, you check your room, I’ll check your father’s.”

He has no qualms going through another person’s possessions. Certainly not when they’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to them.

Stiles swallows and nods back, and they separate to ransack the bedrooms.

Peter wrinkles his nose as soon as he steps into the master bedroom. It doesn’t smell as much of alcohol here, mostly just aftershave, sweat, laundry detergent, the everyday smells one brings home from outside.

But also…

Perfume. And sex. And a second person’s scent. All of it faint but still present.

Peter frowns and then starts poking around. There’s no woman’s presence here, not exactly, this is still very much a room occupied by one man, but there’s a woman’s sweater thrown over the back of a chair, a couple hair-ties on the nightstand, a second toothbrush in the bathroom, and a few other odds and ends that can’t possibly belong to the Sheriff.

So. John Stilinski is seeing someone. Well, perhaps it makes sense. The scent of alcohol wasn’t powerful enough downstairs for the man to be getting quite as constantly drunk as Stiles painted him. It stands to reason that either Stiles was exaggerating - which, considering he was _locked up_ because his father couldn’t handle life, didn’t seem likely - or the good Sheriff has something else to distract himself with nowadays, even if it hasn’t quite cured him of alcoholism entirely.

Peter’s lip curls, but now isn’t the time. He thinks, briefly, of fingerprints as he begins ransacking the place, but neither his nor Stiles’ prints should be in the system.

Hell, Peter’s apparently dead. Nobody suspects a dead man at the scene of a crime.

On the other hand, the scorches in Stiles’ room might be a bit of a giveaway, if the Sheriff can connect the dots. But that’s not good enough evidence for a bunch of human cops, so at the very least, nobody will figure it out right away, and that’s good enough for now.

It doesn’t take long. Peter finds a quilt at the back of the closet, not even folded properly just crumpled into a ball and stuffed into a box, dusty and cobwebbed. When he shakes it out, he discovers a patchwork of stars and squares in dark blues and dove greys, thick and comfortably heavy, not moth-eaten thankfully, but hopelessly creased and slightly worn with use and time, not to mention musty from storage and lack of air.

Stiles hugs it to his chest as soon as Peter passes it over, smelling of grief and loss all over again, and Peter has no qualms suggesting with only a partial nod to logic, “We should take some money, so it’ll at least look like a robbery at first glance.”

Stiles peers at him, and he doesn’t quite manage a smile but he makes a snuffling sound of disbelief before nodding. “Check his nightstand. There’s always a few hundred under the lamp. I’ll get the jar downstairs.”

Peter pockets the four hundred dollar bills he finds, contemplates the lamp for a moment, and then very deliberately drops it onto the floor with a satisfying crash.

“What was that?” Stiles asks when Peter joins him downstairs.

“Clumsiness,” Peter replies smoothly, and Stiles’ mouth quivers with laughter. Peter smirks unrepentantly before ushering them out the back door again, not bothering to lock it behind them.

Not a moment too soon too. He can hear the wail of a siren in the distance as they slip away into the darkness, taking their loot with them.

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry,” Stiles says abruptly when they’re halfway back to the cabin. “I didn’t mean to- to lose control like that. I just- I was angry, and I gave us away. I’m sorry.”

Peter rumbles comfortingly, and Stiles has spent enough time around him to recognize the sound despite not being a werewolf. They pause at the edge of a ravine for Stiles to hop up onto Peter’s back before Peter vaults them across. He doesn’t bother putting the boy down afterwards as they set off deeper into the woods.

“You’re allowed to be upset,” Peter reminds him. “I was, in the study.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t blow it up,” Stiles mutters sullenly.

“I lacked the ability,” Peter points out dryly. “Never mind, Stiles, you didn’t harm anyone, did you? And alright, maybe that’s just because only I was there-” And he can’t help but be pleased by that, even though that’s probably not a good thing in the long run. “-but we can work on it. We’re free now, we can do anything. You learned how to control your powers on your own without any help; you can definitely learn how to have less… exciting emotional outbursts too.”

Stiles snorts. “I still gave us away though.”

“Nobody saw us,” Peter says confidently. “And we’re not staying in Beacon Hills anyway, remember? We’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Stiles sighs but he doesn’t argue that point at least. He’s quiet the rest of the way, juggling the stolen money and files into the house as Peter does a quick patrol just to make doubly sure that he hasn’t left a trail for someone particularly tenacious to follow.

No need to tempt fate after all.

 

* * *

 

Dawn is perhaps an hour away by the time they curl up on the sofa and crack open Stiles’ file. They read it together, and Peter says nothing until they’re finished even as the grip Stiles has on his hand gets tighter and tighter.

“‘Ran away’?” Stiles parrots faintly, gaze frozen on the words in the report. “I ran away from Eichen House?”

Yes, because why bother faking a dead body and a reason for it when kids run away every day? It’s a convenient excuse, and the Sheriff probably didn’t have the money to sue if the Eichen House staff was blamed to begin with. Peter wouldn’t bet on it - that nightmare of a facility would’ve had decades if not centuries of practice at escaping close scrutiny, to have lasted as long as it has. They apparently even had footage of Stiles slipping out in the middle of the night - _“-only place safety measures in the form of locked rooms on those who have a proven history of violence, which Mr. Stilinski did not have; we are not a prison-_ ” - although that’s not been included in the file.

So, a missing persons case was opened and never closed.

Peter wonders how long the Sheriff looked for Stiles. He wonders how hard he looked. He wonders if the man was relieved that he would no longer have to deal with a son who somehow managed to kill his wife.

Stiles is… silent. He doesn’t cry, of course, but he doesn’t burn anything either, doesn’t move at all. He sits next to Peter and stares at nothing.

He had episodes like these in Eichen House too, Peter recalls, although they became rarer the more time Peter was there and actively interacting with him.

For now, he tucks Stiles into his side and flips to the last page, skimming the numbers and words with a critical eye. It looks like a copy of the records of Stiles’ time in Eichen House - everything from full name to date of admission to the date he apparently broke out and ran off on his own, to his age when he was first delivered to their doorstep ( _nine, for moon’s sake, a month short of his tenth birthday, and ten when he was finally carted down into the prison, but still nine when he was more or less sentenced here_ ), to his guardian’s consenting signature.

Peter’s lip peels back in an entirely instinctual snarl.

Not surprisingly, the police made no headways into finding Stiles. The boy was labelled a runaway, and life moved on.

Peter makes a disgusted noise, shuts the file, and tosses it aside.

“I saw the sweater,” Stiles pipes up out of the blue. “In Dad’s room.”

Peter says nothing, has nothing _to_ say.

“If he replaced Mom,” Stiles continues in the same blank tone of voice. “Do you think he replaced me too?”

“...Whether he did or not,” Peter tells him readily, sweeping a soothing thumb back and forth over the faint abrasions marring one of Stiles’ wrists, marks that might not ever fade after so many years under the chafe of the manacles. “Clearly, he doesn’t deserve you either way.”

Stiles doesn’t respond for a long minute, fingers picking at a stray loose thread of his quilt. When he finally does speak, all the anger’s leaked out of him, and mostly, he just sounds defeated. “When can we leave? I just wanna go… somewhere. Somewhere else.”

Peter nods and hugs him that much closer. “Alright, sweetheart. We’re going to need some new identification to blend in anywhere, but I should have contacts outside of Beacon Hills who can do that for us. For now, let’s just go to bed, and in the morning, we’ll make a list of the things we need, and then we can pack up and go. Okay?”

Stiles nods, but he doesn’t move. He leans into Peter instead, tucking up his legs under the quilt and falling asleep like that, head pillowed over Peter’s steady heartbeat.

Peter makes sure not to jostle him as he reaches out for the Hale file and flips it open. Even his medical records are in here. No forwarding address left by Laura though, not even a number with which the police could’ve reached them for further questions, or the hospital for updates on their uncle.

Peter sighs, and this time it’s a cold sort of resignation that settles inside him. Well, what else did he expect from werewolves with so little loyalty?

It doesn’t matter, he decides, once and for all. He wished, once, that Laura would’ve at least had the decency to mercy-kill him instead of leaving him to suffer. But she didn’t, and he survived, and then he met Stiles, and now he’ll rip out the throats of anyone looking to harm him or his.

He has something to live for again. He doesn’t need Laura or Derek.

And it doesn’t matter either that they left no way to trace them. Because Peter has a name.

 _Garrison Myers_.

It’s as good a place to start as any.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take them more than a few days to make sure they have everything they would need for a road trip with no permanent end destination. They need more clothes for Stiles, clothes that actually fit, and just to be safe, they’re reduced to shopping in places that are open late or twenty-four/seven so there’s not that many choices. But at least they have more than enough cash on hand, and they even make a side trip to a bookstore where Stiles grabs the entire Harry Potter series off the shelves.

Peter chuckles at his enthusiasm, but also the sixth book wasn’t even out when the fire happened so he’s looking forward to reviewing the first five and finishing the last two himself.

They pick up a couple more newspapers too. The “Eichen House Monster Breakout” has been dismissed as the effects of an experimental sleeping drug that apparently caused mass hallucinations in the patients. The staff is now forced to deal with demands of how this drug managed to get out and what safety measures they had in place and why those failed to such an extent as to cause mass hysteria, but at least for the time being, their little underground prison - as well as the “Monster Breakout” - has been successfully covered up.

Stiles reads it all with him before declaring with absolute stone-cold certainty, “If it’s still standing when we’ve solved your family’s murders, I’m burning it to the ground.”

They share grim smiles full of teeth, and if it weren’t for the fact that Stiles doesn’t need the help, Peter would be the one holding the matches, pyrophobia or no.

Other than that, there’s an article the day after about the break-in at the Sheriff’s house. The reporter even managed to wrangle a statement from Stilinski, who said only that some money was stolen and a few belongings destroyed in the thief or thieves’ search, but the house was otherwise empty at the time so no one was hurt.

There’s no mention of the stolen files or even the burnt room. Neither Peter nor Stiles is certain what to make of that.

“He probably didn’t notice the missing files,” Stiles repeats confidently enough.

“And maybe the police wants to keep the mysterious change in interior design underwraps until they figure it out,” Peter suggests dubiously.

No BOLOs are issued though, not for Stiles or Peter or anyone else, and compared to the Eichen House issue, a burglary - even at the house of the local Sheriff - apparently pales in comparison because it isn’t brought up again that they can see.

So they move on. There’s no point lingering on the issue when even the cops have clearly put it on the backburner, and they have more important things to do.

The last item on their list is a car. Something nondescript, not too big but still large enough to stash literally everything they currently own. In the end, Peter chooses a secondhand vehicle that makes some part of his soul weep, but safety is more of a priority than vanity, and at least Stiles doesn’t care after he wrings a promise out of Peter to teach him how to drive.

They pay in cash. Or, well, he and Stiles break in in the middle of the night, Stiles causes a power outage that shuts down the alarms, cameras, and glaring lights, and then they spend the next two hours trying to find the right matching keys for their chosen car.

They leave the cash on the front desk. Peter would’ve been perfectly happy not paying at all, but he figures the company will have less reason to pursue the issue if they haven’t been shafted. They’ll probably still report the theft, but, well, in general, Peter finds people less motivated when they haven’t been cheated out of money.

And then they’re done. Peter leaves the car just outside of town, on an out-of-the-way dirt road that leads into the Preserve, and then they head back up to the cabin, clean up, grab their bags, lock the door behind them, and troop back down out of the woods.

They’re on the highway by sunrise, and there’s something so very glorious about the view - an empty expanse of road stretching on for what seems like forever, the horizon heralded by the first orange streaks of dawn, and the windows rolled down to let the wind roar in their ears as the crisp morning air fill their lungs.

Peter’s forgotten this, he thinks, this sense of unhindered independence with no bars or walls or pain or fear to get in the way. Even back up in the cabin, they were mostly holed up licking their wounds, only venturing out to gather what they need to flee that godforsaken town. Beacon Hills as a whole felt like a cage, still.

Here and now though…

He glances to the side and finds Stiles smiling, one hand stretched out the open window to let the wind slip through his fingers like it’s the best feeling in the world. As if sensing Peter’s gaze, the boy looks over, and his smile widens. His golden eyes are bright with genuine joy.

Peter matches his smile, and for the first time since they broke out, he lets himself relax into the simple elation of their hard-won freedom.

 


	3. Act II

* * *

 

The woman in the doorway stares. “...Peter Hale. You’re looking pretty good for someone who’s supposed to be six feet under.”

Peter smiles back sharply. “I can assure you, rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“I’ll say,” The woman snorts. She looks him over again before flicking a glance behind him. “Who’s the kid?”

Stiles meets her gaze without flinching. He hasn’t flinched under anyone’s regard in a long time. Not much scares him anymore. Certainly not _people_.

“This is Stiles,” Peter introduces, stepping back smoothly to rest a hand on Stiles’ back. “He’s my pack.”

Stiles almost preens at the address. He doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of hearing Peter laying claim to him so easily, like he’s _proud_ to call Stiles his.

“Stiles,” Peter adds, even though he already told him on the drive here. “This is Anya. She’s an antiques dealer. Among other things.”

The woman hums at the introduction, green eyes darting between them now. “You don’t have an Alpha.”

Peter looks like he wants to flash his fangs and only just refrains. “I’m sure we’ll manage.” He shoots her a swift pointed look. “Now, maybe we can take our conversation inside.”

Anya stares for a moment longer before sighing and stepping aside to motion them in. “Come on then.” She casts a look behind them. “You better not have been followed.”

Peter scoffs even as he ushers Stiles in through the back of the shop and up the stairs to the second floor. “Please, who do you think I am?”

Anya looks like she has few choice replies to that. Stiles just cranes his head around as they pass her. “Are you a criminal?” Because Peter didn’t say.

He gets raised eyebrows and a weird look from the woman. Beside him, Peter snickers.

Anya looks annoyed now even as she follows them up. “Kid, if you’re here for what I think you’re here for, I’m hardly going to be your average law-abiding citizen.”

Stiles shrugs. Well yeah, but- “You’re only a criminal if you’re caught.”

The woman pauses for a beat before smirking reluctantly. “I can see why Peter likes you. Then no, I’m not a criminal.”

They’re led into the kitchen where Anya sets about making them tea even as she demands, “Well then? Where the hell have you been? Last I heard of the Hales, most of them died in a fire, and the two that survived disappeared off the face of the planet so thoroughly that there are people out there who think the entire pack was wiped out.”

Peter’s expression grows slightly fixed, and Stiles flexes his fingers in response, but they still need the woman, and Peter doesn’t seem about to attack, so Stiles takes care not to let his hands glow. They’ve even gone out of their way to get him coloured contacts already, although even contacts can barely hide the shine in his eyes.

“I was held up,” Peter answers, dry as dust, and that’s the only answer he gives. “But it means I’ve been… out of touch with the world for the past six years, not to mention declared legally dead, so I’m going to need some new documents.” He glances at Stiles. “Stiles too.”

“Straight to business then,” Anya mutters as she puts the kettle on. She turns and gives them a more calculating look. “What’s in it for me? You know I don’t take cash.”

Peter smiles back coolly. “I have a few rare books from the Hale collection that survived the fire-” More like it was never in the fire, being in the Vault and all, but Peter told Stiles it sounds even more valuable this way. “-which I’m willing to trade for your services.”

Anya’s eyes narrow. “I want six of my choice.”

Peter snorts. “Two. Chosen from a selection I give you.”

Anya scowls. “What if I already have all of them? Five.”

Peter sneers. “Do you think the books I’ll be offering you are ones you can walk into a bookshop to find? Two, and obviously I’ll make sure they’re both unique to you.”

Anya huffs. “Four then.”

Peter’s sneer only gets more pronounced. “I’m not actually bargaining with you here, you realize? Two is my final offer, or we’ll take our business elsewhere.”

Anya bristles. “You realize forgery isn’t actually my profession, right? And you won’t even tell me what kind of trouble you’ve been in and whether or not it’ll land on my doorstep. That deserves more than just two books!”

Peter’s expression couldn’t possibly get more condescending. “I didn’t think I’d actually have to bring this up, but your memory seems a little spotty so allow me to clarify - two books, and that pesky little theft you committed won’t reach the wrong ears.”

Anya instantly pales about three shades. A muscle in her jaw ticks. “...Blackmail now, Hale? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I’d think of it less as blackmail and more as a reminder of your mistakes.” Peter smiles winningly at her in a way that turns his eyes to chips of ice. “After all, you’re the one who decided to steal from one of the most powerful witches in the world. I can’t help stupidity.”

Anya glares, furious, but they all know she’s lost. The kettle shrills and she jerks it off the stove with a screeching clang. “ _Fine_. Two books and your silence. And God help you if you don’t keep your word, Hale.”

Peter looks amused now. “I don’t think I’ll be the one needing help from deities. But so long as you get me what I want, I’m sure the information will remain between the three of us.”

The woman’s shoulders jerk, and then she’s slicing a glance over to Stiles, like she forgot he was there. People tend to do that when Stiles isn’t deliberately drawing attention to himself.

(Dad often forgot to make him lunch, forgot to come home for the dinner Stiles prepared, forgot to get him his ADHD prescription and drive him to school and pick him up from the hospital after a visit to Mom. Dad forgot a lot of things when it came to Stiles.)

Stiles attempts a disarming smile. He’s not sure if it works because the woman narrows her eyes but she also turns back to Peter to bicker and trade barbed insults with some more.

(“And you’re friends?” Stiles asked dubiously.

Peter shrugged. “Insofar as anyone who has dirt on the other can be friends. She’s good at what she does, she’s the closest to us in location at the moment, her price range is one I’ll be able to pay, and she’s one of the handful of people I can think of off the top of my head who probably won’t stab us in the back.” He pauses. “But, well, it _has_ been six years, so just in case, do keep an eye out, alright?”)

Three cups of tea are slammed down on the table between before Anya jabs a finger in Peter’s face. “I want to see those books first. And I get one now, and the other after.”

Peter is gracious in victory. He inclines his head and gestures back out the kitchen doorway. “I have them in the car. Shall we?” He glances over at Stiles. “Sweetheart, stay here, alright? I know you get bored when I talk shop. Enjoy the tea. We’ll be back soon.”

Stiles nods obediently, and the niggling suspicion in Anya’s expression slides away, all her mistrustful attention focused on Peter instead as they leave the room together.

(“You have a face people tend to underestimate,” Peter told him on their way here. “Let’s use that.”)

Stiles is left alone in the kitchen. The clock ticks overhead as he plucks one of the cups from the trays. The liquid looks clear enough, and it smells of some kind of tea, from what little Stiles can remember of the beverage. The Stilinski household always preferred coffee more. Coffee and alcohol.

He stares at the drink for a moment, and then lets his power loose in a dazzling flash of light, concentrated to a point and rippling through the liquid the way he remembers flooding Peter’s body and burning the poison from his bloodstream.

By the time the kitchen clears again, a cloud of purple floats at the top of the tea, and when Stiles does it again for the other two, one shows the same results, the other does not.

(“I’d like to say she wouldn’t try to kill us,” Peter sighed. “We _were_ friends, even if it was of the somewhat antagonistic sort. We did favours for each other back in the day. But there’s also currently a trunk full of family heirlooms in the back, and - as far as she’ll be aware - nobody to care if we go missing again. And if there’s one vice Anya will readily admit to, it’s greed.”)

Stiles stares at the drinks for a moment, then gets to his feet.

 

* * *

 

When Peter and Anya finally come back, Stiles is taking dubious sips of his tea - he doesn’t think he likes it much - while a fresh cup awaits Peter across the table.

The third cup has cooled significantly and is absolutely swimming with as much of both poisoned tea as Stiles could possibly pour into it.

Anya’s eyes go wide, and for a second, she looks exactly like someone caught in the crosshairs of a gun.

Peter just barks out a laugh, picks up his own tea, and beams at Stiles as he takes a sip from it.

 

* * *

 

They’re on the road again, two weeks later. Peter is driving. Stiles spends most of the drive on his new laptop, still working on figuring out all the new features and Googling any topic that comes to mind.

“We could settle down somewhere,” Peter offered back in January, when they first left Beacon Hills behind. “And you could go to a proper school while I track down leads.”

But even just the thought of letting Peter out of his sight for at least six hours of the day makes Stiles’ throat close up. He’s not exactly _afraid_ of the prospect, at least not for himself, but it makes him twitchy and like he’s on the brink of a panic attack all the same, because what if something happens to Peter? Stiles would never know.

So he refused, insisting he would do self-study instead - there are a bunch of links to GED curriculums and practice tests online anyway. And Stiles didn’t miss the relief on Peter’s face either, even if the werewolf tried to hide it. Stiles doesn’t know why - it’s nice to know Peter wants him around, and if they both prefer sticking together, then there’s no reason why they should do otherwise.

Besides, Stiles promised to help Peter get his revenge. Well, not in so many words, but it’s been implied more than once. He isn’t about to go back on his promise, and he has a feeling that if he actually starts attending… middle school? High school? Either way, like some _normal kid_ , Peter might… well, he might leave Stiles behind.

Peter doesn’t need deadweight after all. Oh, he’ll probably still take care of Stiles, but Stiles doesn’t need _taking care of_.

He just needs Peter.

So here they are, on the trail of Garrison Myers, who quit his job as an insurance investigator in Beacon Hills and moved to another state entirely. Myers _did_ leave a forwarding address, if only because he was part of such a prominent case - accident or no, it still killed Beacon Hills’ oldest and richest family - and if he was trying to disappear, he didn’t do a very good job of it.

“My contact came through,” Peter explained earlier with a flash of electric blue eyes. “It took some digging, but Myers hasn’t exactly been splurging for the past half-decade either. He had five hundred thousand dollars wired to a second bank account he still owns, the day after he declared the fire an accident.”

The steering wheel had creaked under his hands until Stiles reached over and tugged one into his own.

“I think I should be insulted,” Peter murmured through a harsh-looking smirk that held the kind of reckless humour that meant you were smiling only because the other option was to cry. “That he thought my family was only worth five hundred thousand dollars. I grabbed a million from the Vault alone, and that’s not even counting the bearer bonds.”

Stiles tightened his grip on Peter’s hand. “Are you going to kill him? Or make sure he’s destitute before he goes to jail?”

Peter looked like his first instinct was the first option, but after a moment of thought, the second seemed to appeal to him too.

“I’ll think about it,” He said in the end, but he also squeezed Stiles’ hand in return, and the bitter rage in him banked for a while.

Now they’re fifteen minutes outside of a some little town in Oregon, and Stiles is looking for a motel for them to stay in, hopefully one that won’t take much notice of a man and a teenager from out of town booking a room in the middle of a school term. Cost is of no issue though, Peter assured him, so they can at least take their pick, even if there aren’t exactly a lot of choices.

Money is still kind of weird for Stiles. He knows the higher the number, the more expensive something is, obviously, but he’s still not certain what number is too high or too low when purchasing something. Peter says that’s normal, not even just for Stiles but for other people - that’s what the internet’s for, you look up other prices to compare - but Stiles is pretty sure other people can at least walk into a supermarket and know which discounts are actually discounts and which just seem like it.

Stiles can’t, and it’s extra frustrating because he thinks he could, once. He remembers doing the shopping for the house because his dad forgot or didn’t have time, and as far as he’s aware, they never ran out of money, so he must’ve been decent at it.

He hates how much he’s forgotten. Back in Eichen House, on the few occasions he still thought about being free one day, he didn’t realize it would be as big a problem as it’s turned out to be, what with all the time he had to do nothing but sit there and think, and yet somehow, things he once knew has still managed to escape his memory. But there’s nothing to do about it except relearn and learn more.

He just has to keep reminding himself that he’s free to do that now.

“How ’bout this one?” Stiles angles the screen at Peter when they pause at a stoplight.

Peter’s grimacing before he even glances over, but Stiles knows that’s only because he despairs of anything less than a five-star hotel.

“It has a pool,” Stiles offers hopefully. He hasn’t been swimming in ages, and something in Peter’s expression softens.

“Alright,” The werewolf folds, and Stiles beams. “That better be the best motel with a pool in a ten-mile radius though. Book us a room for a week.”

“‘Kay!” Stiles cheers, retrieving his laptop to do just that. Swimming at least is something he can’t forget.

He thinks.

 

* * *

 

They go swimming, and thankfully, Stiles _hasn’t_ forgotten that life skill. He tires after splashing around a little and doing a few laps though, still more skin and bones than anything else despite how much magic he has access to again.

He takes a break, sitting on the edge and idly watching Peter cut gracefully back and forth through the water instead. Unlike him, the werewolf’s regained more muscle mass in the two months they’ve been free - mostly keeping their heads down and travelling along lengthy stretches of countryside went a long way towards getting Peter back to a relatively healthy physique. Even the majority of his burn scars have disappeared as his werewolf healing began working properly again without drugs and constant injuries weighing it down. He’s still slightly underweight but he definitely doesn’t look downright starved anymore, and his skin’s regained a healthier colour from the regular - if weak - sunshine they’ve had.

Stiles glances down at himself. The month and a half they took to simply focus on getting better and adjusting to sounds and smells and sights and _people_ again were good for him too. At the very least, he doesn’t jump a foot in the air anymore when a car horn honks, doesn’t hyperventilate either just from seeing crowds of people outside the car, and he’s less prone to forgetting common sense things like how to operate a washing machine or how to order at Starbucks or what kind of clothes to wear when going out in public or which hand holds the knife and which holds the fork. He’s getting _better_.

But he can still see his own ribs, and even though he’s always been on the pale side, he knows he isn’t supposed to be _this_ pale. He just doesn’t soak up sunlight as well as Peter does. He doesn’t even like being out in the sun too much. For some unfathomable reason, the light of his magic doesn’t hurt his eyes but sunlight does, even when he isn’t staring straight at it. He supposes he should be grateful that at least it’s only March. August weather would probably make his skin all red and burnt and splotchy.

Still, he likes being outside where the wind can touch him, and everything just smells more… natural. No blood and bleach and stale air. Just the sky above and dirt underneath and trees and buildings and _space_ instead of four walls and a cot.

“Stiles? Is something wrong?”

He looks back up. Peter’s stopped swimming laps and is approaching him instead, concern etched on his features. It’s late in the evening so there’s no one else around.

Still, there’s light enough to see by, and Stiles’ eyes catch on the droplets of water trickling out of Peter’s hair, off his shoulders, down the lines of his neck and collarbones and chest. Even after six years in a cell, Peter’s still a lot broader than Stiles. Generally stronger-looking too. Also, Stiles can’t count his ribs the way he can count his own. Not anymore anyway.

He blinks and meets Peter’s gaze again as the man comes to a halt in front of him. “Stiles?”

Stiles shakes his head, and then shivers a little when a gust of wind whistles by. That’s the downside, he supposes. He gets cold a lot more easily than he remembers too.

He blinks when Peter hoists himself out of the pool, water sluicing off him in rivulets. The man walks over to the two lounge chairs where their belongings are, and a moment later, he’s back and bundling a fluffy towel around Stiles’ shoulders.

“Now would be a bad time to catch a cold,” Peter scolds mildly. “You’re still recovering. We both are.”

Stiles huffs a little but also scoots over to cuddle into Peter’s warmth. “I’m fine. People get cold all the time.”

“Yes, but then they put on clothes,” Peter points out wryly. “And if you’re not going to swim some more, we might as well head back up.”

Stiles grumbles. “What if I just want to watch you swim?”

Peter cocks an eyebrow. “Do you?”

Stiles considers that. “Yes. I like watching you.”

He does. He was alone for so long, with only guards and orderlies hauling him out of his cell to stick needles in him or shove him under a spray of water.

But then. But then, days and months after he’d adjusted to a solitary existence, the door opened and a bandaged, burnt mess of a man was carted in.

Stiles didn’t want him there at first. He was an intruder in the only relatively safe space Stiles had, he smelled funny, like smoke and blood and rot, and even worse, he never responded to anything Stiles said. Obviously he couldn’t, because of the coma and paralysis, but Stiles still thought - uncharitably - that there was little point to having a cellmate if he didn’t even do anything except lie there day in and day out. Stiles wanted so desperately to at least have someone to talk to, to relate to, only for that hope to wink out when it became clear Peter wouldn’t be able to provide even that much for him. So, for a while, Stiles just ignored him and tried to ignore the world.

Peter recovered though, bit by bit. Stiles pitied him sometimes, when he came back even bloodier than before, looking a little like someone put raw meat through a blender, with subconscious whimpers trapped in his throat. On occasion, once the man was capable of it, he even cried, silent tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes and into his hair. Stiles used to think it would’ve been better if he’d died before the Doctors ever got their hands on him.

But then, one day, days and months and years later, Peter moved. Just a twitch of fingers at first, then hands, then _claws_. And Stiles thought he was perfectly resigned to never talking to anyone again, but… maybe it was curiosity. Or maybe his loneliness still got the better of him after all that time.

So he spoke again, _tried again_ , and his heart jumped when Peter finally responded. Peter, who _talked to him_ , and Stiles could barely remember the last time someone did that - not a demand, or a bunch of clinical words volleyed back and forth _about_ him, like he was an object, but an _actual conversation_ , and maybe it made Stiles a little pathetic, but he couldn’t help but cling to that, offering Peter whatever knowledge he could about Eichen House, about their time spent trapped in its prison sector, even about his own past. Anything and everything to make sure _Peter_ kept asking questions and responding.

It wasn’t even that Stiles didn’t like silence anymore. But he _needed_ to know he wasn’t completely alone, wasn’t just sitting there wasting away, listening to a shell of a man struggling for each breath, and the best way to do that was for Peter to talk to him.

Watching him was the next best thing. It didn’t used to be, when Peter was still largely comatose. Frankly, there’s very little difference between a living body that barely moves and a corpse, especially one that looked as bad as Peter did for a very long time.

But once Peter _could_ move again, Stiles liked watching him. When he wasn’t speaking, he was working to regain his strength, or when he _was_ speaking, he made gestures as he did so. Either way, he was almost always moving, like he couldn’t bear to stay still.

And even when he was sleeping, it was different than when he was in a coma. For one, after they got to know each other a little, Peter didn’t seem to mind when Stiles curled up next to him, even seemed to welcome it. Sometimes, Stiles would wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, in one of the few times they let themselves fall asleep together before a guard checked in on them, and the cell would be pitch-black but Peter was heavy and warm and alive beside him, one arm wrapped around him, and it didn’t matter that Stiles couldn’t really make out much of anything, he’d still stare drowsily up at the vague outline of Peter’s face, and it would always make him feel better.

That didn’t change once they got out. He likes sleeping with Peter and waking up to him, and he likes watching Peter because it means Peter is still _here_ , with him.

He’s been quiet too long, he realizes. He does that sometimes, getting lost in his own thoughts. Less now, he thinks, than before, but he should probably work on that.

Peter never seems to mind that either though, either calling him back or simply waiting him out, and this time is no different, although when Stiles checks Peter’s reaction, the werewolf is watching him with a peculiar expression that Stiles can’t quite place.

But once he realizes he has Stiles’ attention again, all Peter murmurs is, “Oh, sweetheart,” before dropping a kiss to his head and absently resting a hand on the back of his neck. The endearment settles a little like hot chocolate inside Stiles, as Peter’s penchant for terms of affection always does, and unlike when the guards grabbed him, back when Stiles still fought even with the cuffs and straitjacket on, and was brutally pinned down for his efforts, Peter’s possessive grip only makes him relax. The werewolf’s never hurt him despite his superior physical strength, and the concept of scenting was admittedly a bit strange at the beginning, especially after having gone so long with nobody touching him except cold gloved hands manhandling him, but Stiles has grown to like it.

It’s a comfort now, to know that Peter wants him with him as much as Stiles wants to be with him.

“It _is_ getting late though,” Peter continues. “And the pool closes in half an hour anyway. We can always come back another day, so for now, how about we turn in for dinner? We haven’t eaten yet.”

That’s a good point. And Stiles _is_ getting kind of hungry. Peter probably is too.

“Okay,” He agrees, rolling to his feet and shrugging into the robe that Peter hands him.

It’s nice, to be able to do simple things like this. Their walk back to their room is a quiet one, but Peter keeps an arm draped around his shoulders, and Stiles thinks if he could have just this - just Peter, no matter where they go - for the rest of his life, he would be perfectly happy never having anything else.

 

* * *

 

They get to work that night. Their daily schedule is still a little messed up - they tend to be more active at night and in the mornings and evenings, spending a majority of the day sleeping instead. Stiles doesn’t like too much sun, and Peter doesn’t like going out without him.

They already have an address, and the motel they’re staying in is on the opposite side of the town. They track it down to an empty apartment unit in one of the nicer-looking resident buildings, cameras at the front entrance but not anywhere else, and once Peter gives him the go-ahead, Stiles jiggles the lock open, and they’re inside.

Aside from the fact that there’s no heartbeat, it’s pretty obvious nobody’s been home for a few days. The kitchen sink and dishwasher are empty, the bed is made, the lights are off.

“Baseball training trip,” Stiles announces after rifling through some of the papers left on the counter and coming up with an opened info packet and a crude itinerary. He frowns. “It looks like he’s a… school bus driver now?”

Peter comes up behind him to read over his shoulder, and at that revelation, he snorts. “They let anybody around kids these days.” He glances around. The place looks pretty normal, for someone complicit in covering up multiple homicide. “Well, if he’s not going to be home until tomorrow, we might as well look around.”

Stiles doesn’t really think they’ll find anything. There was a short background check on Myers in the case file, and… somehow, Stiles didn’t get the sense that he was in it for anything except money. Trophies didn’t seem his style, and judging by how he seemed to have panicked in the aftermath of accepting the bribe, and reacted by _moving to another state_ , leaving a stampede of footprints in the process, his part in hiding any trace of arson was probably his first major crime.

Not that that absolves him of anything of course.

Stiles does end up finding a bunch of empty beer bottles under the sink, and even more unopened ones in the fridge. Functioning alcoholic, judging by the amount.

Why do all grownups turn to alcohol when things get tough? It doesn’t magically fix anything, as far as Stiles is aware.

Thank god Peter isn’t like that, and if anyone has a right to drown their sorrows, it’s Peter.

“Wouldn’t work anyway,” Peter tells him from where he’s flipping through some letters, and oh, Stiles must’ve been talking to himself out loud again. “Werewolf. I’d need wolfsbane-diluted alcohol if I want the effects, which I don’t. Blanks in my memory and a hangover aren’t exactly what I’d consider a good time. I do enjoy a nice wine, but that’s just for the taste.”

Stiles nods. That makes sense, especially after Peter lost six years of time due to the fire. And forgetting things… only causes more problems in the end. Stiles can attest to that.

“He has no trouble keeping up with his bills at least,” Peter remarks, tossing the letters back on the dining table. “And for a man living on a bus driver’s salary,” He nods at the flatscreen in the living area, paired with various pieces of expensive-looking furniture. “Those are pretty nice.”

Most of the rest of the flat is fairly normal for a middle-aged man. It’s not until they - neatly - ransack the bedroom that they find anything of interest. A box of newspaper clippings are hidden at the back of the drawer of his nightstand, black and white and creased, dating from the first day after the fire was declared an accident and the news ran a couple stories on it, and including articles about everything from one dated last year about how the Hale house in the Preserve remained dilapidated and abandoned and in Hale ownership for only another year before it would go to the county, to one dated just a mere two weeks after the Eichen House breakout - an anniversary piece for the fire, and apparently local news was slow enough that they were dredging that back up again.

“Guess he’s still paranoid,” Stiles mutters, reaching out and gently tugging the clippings out of Peter’s hands when the werewolf stares too long at a picture of his old house on fire. The picture’s new so someone must’ve taken a shot of its current state and then photoshopped flames around it.

Humans are disgusting sometimes.

They didn’t go to the Hale house after escaping. Peter never mentioned wanting to so Stiles didn’t bring it up either, and now he’s glad he didn’t. Even without it being actively on fire, the place has obviously been left to rot, and Peter doesn’t need to see that in person.

“I don’t think he’s keeping them as mementos,” Peter agrees with a sardonic twist of his lips as Stiles shoves the clippings back into the nightstand. “It smells like he takes them out pretty often, and he’s always worried. Scared.” He sneers. “ _Guilty_. Not guilty enough to turn himself in of course.”

Stiles slips his hand into Peter’s, and the werewolf takes a deep breath.

“Tomorrow then?” Stiles asks quietly.

Peter’s eyes are cold. “Tomorrow. I’ll get all the information I can out of him before I kill him, but… I don’t think I have the patience to see him in jail after all.”

Stiles nods, and that seems to remind Peter of something because his expression turns vaguely conflicted. “...You don’t have to come, Stiles. What I’ll be doing… I won’t make it quick.”

Stiles actually has to roll his eyes. “ _Peter_. I killed at least five guards before I went back for you. I killed more when I was destroying all the cell walls.” He scowls up at Peter. “Did you think I was just talking about murder with you for show? Nothing you do is gonna scare me away.”

He makes a startled noise when he’s bodily hauled around and wrangled into a hug tight enough to make Stiles gasp. But he doesn’t complain, even when Peter buries his face in his neck and the scratch of his beard makes Stiles squirm a little.

It’s times like this though that makes Stiles think he isn’t the only one who still needs assurance.

(Isn’t the only one either who would burn the world down to keep the two of them safe from anyone who might try to separate them or hurt them again.)

“How are we gonna keep him quiet though?” Stiles asks once Peter finally pulls away, although the werewolf doesn’t go far, almost hovering, hands on Stiles’ shoulders. “He’s probably gonna scream his head off, right?”

“I have some warding stones from the Vault,” Peter smiles grimly. “He can scream as loud as he wants; no one will hear him.”

Stiles stalls on the first bit though, eyes going wide. “Warding stones?”

Peter chuckles. “Come on, let’s head back and I’ll show you.”

 

* * *

 

Peter spends the next day introducing Stiles to runes. The werewolf doesn’t know that much, as it turns out, just some of the basics. The warding stones - seven of them, carved with runes that isolate sound in whatever area they’re placed around - are just another heirloom passed down from a past emissary, not something that anyone in their generation made. Still, he knows more than Stiles, and Stiles is determined to learn everything Peter can teach him.

They get some sleep in-between, or at least Stiles does because when he wakes, Peter is already up and pacing like a caged animal so Stiles suggests burning off some energy down at the pool again. There are a handful of other people this time so Stiles keeps his shirt and shorts and bathrobe on and doesn’t venture into the water. It’s not that he particularly cares what they might think of what he looks like, but he knows he’s still the kind of skinny that attracts unwanted questions. It’s bad enough he looks as young as he does but that can be explained away without much trouble if anyone asks, and at least for now, the less attention either of them garners, the better.

So Stiles puts on some sunglasses and curls up in the shade of an umbrella with a book while Peter swims. More than one person at the pool gives the werewolf an appreciative once-over that makes Stiles feel vaguely annoyed. He can tell Peter is the good-looking sort - Eichen House didn’t stunt that ability at least - but don’t people know it’s rude to stare? Honestly.

Peter swims for about forty minutes before finally climbing out of the pool, dripping water even as he makes his way over to Stiles in nothing but swim shorts.

There’s a guy at the far end who whistled or called out some stupidly flirty one-liner almost every time Peter paused for a few extra seconds of breath at their side of the pool, and he gives an extra loud whistle now, with his two friends snorting with laughter around him. Peter pays them no mind though as he dries off and takes a seat at the end of Stiles’ lounge chair.

“You sure you don’t want to go for a dip, Stiles?” Peter asks, his voice coming out slightly breathless with exertion.

Stiles shakes his head. “It’s safer if I don’t.”

Peter frowns but doesn’t disagree. “It won’t always be like this,” He promises instead. “Once this is done-”

Stiles pokes Peter’s thigh with his toes. “Oh my god, I _know_ , Peter. I don’t mind. I mean,” He shrugs, just a touch self-conscious. “So long as I’m with you, it’s fine.”

Peter’s features go soft, only ever for Stiles, that Stiles has seen. “Well, I’m not going anywhere without you.” He reaches out like he wants to take Stiles’ hand but aborts the movement and ruffles his hair instead. “Come on, let’s head back to our room. We can get some rest, order in, and prepare for tonight.”

They pass by the guy from earlier as they exit the pool. If Peter notices, he completely ignores whistle-idiot’s exaggerated stretching on his lounge chair and simultaneous attempt to catch his eye.

Stiles does not. He steps past the pool gate Peter is holding open for him, his fingers twitch, and then - with an ear-splitting series of cracks - whistle-idiot’s chair collapses underneath him, taking him with it in a flailing pile of shouts and limbs. One last flick of his forefinger and a flash of light nobody sees, and even the umbrella breaks in half and topples over, landing right on top of whistle-idiot with a weighted unyielding thud.

The gate clangs shut behind them as vehement cussing colours the air, and at his side, Peter’s shoulders shake. When Stiles peeks up, it’s to find the werewolf wheezing with laughter.

Stiles huffs. He doesn’t know what’s so funny. That guy was _annoying_.

“Your petty streak is a mile wide, sweetheart, I approve,” Peter tells him, words gilded with amusement. “But I hope you know that there’s no need for it, right? I’m yours.”

Stiles considers that for a minute. Yes, that does sound right. Peter is _his_. _Pack_. And Pack is everything.

“Well, I’m yours too,” He offers, because that’s equally true.

Peter smiles, eyes lighting up briefly with that otherworldly blue even as his hand comes up to rest against Stiles’ back.

“That,” He murmurs, voice rumbling with a dark sort of possessiveness that maybe should’ve scared Stiles. “Goes without saying, sweetheart.”

 

* * *

 

They make their way across town again, under the cover of darkness. It’s a Monday so there’s not many people out and about. A few cars pass them by, and a crowd of teenagers who probably shouldn’t be out are smoking on a street corner. Stiles and Peter are across the street, and they’re stealthy enough that the teens don’t even glance over.

They reach Myers’ apartment building soon enough, and when they round the back and count the doors on the second floor, the window is dark again but it’s late enough for even most adults to be asleep. Stiles has one foot on the nearby staircase when Peter stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Wait,” The man mutters, eyes intent on Myers’ unit. “Something’s wrong.”

Stiles freezes, and he feels his magic leap, although he’s careful not to let any light flash. “You can hear more than one heartbeat?”

Peter’s eyes narrow. “No. I can’t hear any heartbeats.” He scans the parking lot, head cocked, and Stiles follows his example, searching for any signs of movement, but there’s nothing. When Peter finally moves again, it’s to tap his nose. “But I do smell blood. Fresh.”

He steps past Stiles with purpose. “Let me go first.”

Stiles makes a face but doesn’t bother arguing, creeping up the stairs after Peter as they make their way towards Myers’ apartment.

They reach their target’s door, and this time, it’s Stiles who catches Peter’s wrist before the man can touch the doorknob.

“If something’s wrong in there,” Stiles explains, pulling down his own sleeves over his hands. “Then the police are probably gonna get involved sooner or later. I don’t think we should give them a reason to search for two sets of unknown prints.”

He should’ve done the same back at his dad’s house, if he’s honest. But half his time in Beacon Hills - after they fled Eichen House - felt like a dream. He’ll put it down to not thinking very clearly, still adjusting to the outside world, and never be that careless again. He makes a mental note to also wipe down anything in Myers’ apartment that he and Peter touched yesterday. It was one thing when they thought Myers didn’t even know someone was coming after him; it’s another entirely if someone else has found him and didn’t even bother cleaning up after themselves.

Peter nods silently, and as Stiles tries the doorknob - locked - and then stoops over to pick it, the werewolf unsheathes his claws and pushes inside the moment Stiles gets the door open.

The interior is dark, and silent in a way that’s somehow heavier than yesterday. Stiles closes the door and drops the blinds on the window before letting his magic loose. He’s figured out how to hold a few sparks of it in the air - like fireflies - and they bob around them as they cautiously look around.

Stiles wrinkles his nose. Now that they’re inside, even he can smell the blood. The kitchen is empty though, as is the living area.

Peter’s nose wrinkles though, and in a low near-whisper, he tells Stiles, “Someone - not Myers - has been through here. I smell wolfsbane and mountain ash. Hunter.” He sniffs again. “Perfume to try and hide it too. Female.”

He gestures down the hall next and leads the way. The bathroom light is on, a strip of it showing in the crack between the closed door and floor. Peter stops in front of it, bares his teeth, and he doesn’t bother with subtlety anymore as he pulls back a foot and proceeds to kick the door down. The flimsy latch snaps under the impact, and-

 ** _DANGER_** , Stiles’ magic blares, the way it constantly did back in Eichen House, even after the cuffs came on, so often that he had practically learned to ignore it, but his magic hasn’t felt this urgent in weeks, and Stiles is moving before it’s even a conscious decision in his head.

He grabs Peter by the back of his coat and yanks him back as hard as he can so that they’re both still hidden around the corner, just as the bathroom door flies open. At the same time, one of Stiles’ sparks in the air flashes like an eye-searing warning sign before zooming forward and into the bathroom, and a second after that, Stiles feels it slam into something that results in the sudden hissing sputter of a very tiny explosion.

And then there is silence.

Stiles’ magic calms, and when he glances up, Peter’s eyes are werewolf bright and avid on Stiles’ face, but he doesn’t question him, and he only starts moving again when Stiles lets go of him and nods a go-ahead.

The first thing Stiles sees when he peers around Peter’s frame is the naked body in the bathtub. The second is the red tint of the water.

Peter stalks into the bathroom, a furious snarl bouncing off the walls as he stops to loom over Myers who is undoubtedly dead.

“ _Suicide_ ,” Peter scoffs derisively. “How _quaint_.”

Stiles takes in the razor blade in the tub, and then the clear lines on the man’s wrists. There’s even a half-empty bottle of beer spilled across the floor, and all in all, it really does look like a suicide, except-

Stiles squeezes past Peter and makes his way over to the far corner of the bathroom. A few bits of charred metal litter the counter, and when Stiles looks up, there’s just enough space between mirror and ceiling to tuck a device this size and give whoever was on the other end a perfect view of anybody who came in through the door.

“Camera?” Stiles muses, glancing back at Peter who nods curtly, raking an eye over the remains.

“Likely,” He agrees through gritted teeth, turning back to the body. “Someone decided to take extra measures to make sure he would keep his mouth shut, just in case somebody else came looking for him.”

Stiles frowns. “I don’t get it. Nobody knew we were coming here. And… I don’t think his place was being monitored. I would’ve known.”

He would’ve. He doesn’t think his magic can give him information on other people - that’s not how it works - but it would’ve told him if Myers was being watched because they would’ve seen Stiles and Peter arrive, and that would’ve put them in danger.

Peter casts him a swift look that tells him the werewolf will probably ask more questions about Stiles’ abilities later, but for now, he only shakes his head, a twisted smile thinning his lips. “Someone knew I was in Eichen House. That’s the only reason I can think of that would’ve alerted whoever was responsible for killing my family. They must’ve heard of the breakout. So, just in case I was still alive, they decided to silence anyone they thought I might be able to track down. It’s just bad luck they got to him right before we could.”

Something feral ripples across his features then, and his hands clench hard enough for his knuckles to go white. Stiles is surprised he hasn’t drawn blood, and for a moment, he thinks Peter might lash out, break something, or even rip into the convenient - if no longer particularly useful - corpse in front of him.

But Peter reels it in, temper and all, and when Stiles steps back over to his side, his self-control seems to settle even further, allowing him to take a few deep breaths. The helpless rage is still there, but for now, where he can’t afford to damage their surroundings, he keeps that anger under lock and key.

“We should go,” Stiles suggests. “Whoever killed Myers and put that camera here didn’t see us, but they definitely saw the door open.” Peter looks faintly chagrined at that. “They might think it’s just the cops, and I don’t think they’re actually gonna come back and check in person, but they’re gonna wonder what it was that destroyed their camera at least.”

It’s that last bit that seems to get Peter moving because he tenses up, and his hands come up to curl briefly around Stiles’ shoulders before acquiescing with another nod.

“Why make it any easier for them though?” Peter murmurs, looking once more at the body. “They wanted to make it look like a suicide. We’ll have to take the camera pieces or they’ll wonder how it was destroyed. But Myers has those newspaper clippings. We can move those to somewhere the cops will find once someone finds the body and calls them. Even if they do end up thinking this was suicide, they might at least wonder why he was so hung up on an accident from six years ago.”

Stiles nods in agreement. “Okay, you get the clippings, I’ll clean up.” He looks to the camera pieces. “Remember not to touch anything with your hands, and we’ll wipe down everything we touched yesterday. I mean I don’t think there’s much I can do about the letters and articles but-”

He breaks off and shrugs with a grimace. Nothing they can do about it now. Peter heads off to the bedroom, and Stiles grabs the nearest hand towel he can find.

They get to work.

 

* * *

 

In the end, they spill another bottle of beer in the hall and one more in the living room before leaving the clippings tossed haphazardly on the floor in front of the couch as if they were dropped there by a drunk when he stumbled to the bathroom for the last time.

Or perhaps when he was dragged there and probably drugged to make him pliant before his suicide was staged.

They leave once they’ve double-checked that they’ve left nothing of their presence behind, and by the time they get back to their motel room, Stiles’ energy has flagged enough that he barely remembers to rush through a shower before falling into bed.

He doesn’t sleep though. His leg muscles ache so he’s glad to be lying down, but he also listens to the shower run way too long for Peter to be doing anything in there except brooding over missing their prey, and he’s still awake when the man finally comes out in sleep pants, only to sit down at the end of the bed and put his head in his hands like he has a headache.

“You should be asleep,” comes his muffled voice when Stiles forces himself to climb out from under the blankets and crawl over to lean into Peter’s side instead. “We’ve had a long night.”

Stiles hums noncommittally and doesn’t bother pointing out that he’s not going to be able to sleep when Peter’s this upset.

He doesn’t know how to comfort people, not really, and that’s not even on Eichen House. Even back _before_ , he never knew what to say or do to make his dad feel better every time the doctors’ prognosis of his mom’s condition got more pessimistic or after Claudia screamed her head off about her murderer son and almost jumped off the roof again to get away. Whenever he tried, with hot meals and finished chores and painkillers in the mornings, it just seemed to make things worse, make his dad more distant, make the house feel emptier.

But what he does know now is how to _be_ here and let Peter know he’s not alone, and Stiles has learned that - sometimes - that’s more important than spinning words of hope and encouragement.

So he sits and he waits, and eventually, Peter says in a voice tight enough to strangle, “He was my only lead.” He makes a noise that’s half-beast, a savage snarl of the kind of barely leashed anger that has no one to aim it at and is all the more lethal for it. “I don’t even know where Laura took Derek so I can’t even shake it out of _him_ , and I didn’t- They didn’t care about me. _I don’t want to need them_.”

He jerks upright, and a second later, a clawed fist finally lashes out and slams into the coffee table, which doesn’t stand a chance, shattering under the force of the blow.

It’s probably lucky Stiles foresaw something like that reaction - ever since they found the body to be honest - and took it upon himself to set up those warding stones earlier.

Peter’s chest heaves like he’s run a marathon, eyes flickering blue to brighter blue and back. Stiles studies him for a moment longer before pulling up his knees and then swinging around to drop himself right into Peter’s lap. He wraps his arms around the werewolf in a hug that still feels awkward, but he also feels Peter go stiff against him, hands frozen in the air like he doesn’t know where to put them, and so Stiles stays put and doesn’t move until Peter slumps, all the tension seeping out of him in one long shuddering breath, and his arms close in to wrap around Stiles in return.

“You should really be more careful,” Peter mumbles into Stiles’ neck. “I could hurt you.”

Stiles scoffs at the very idea. If Peter didn’t rip his throat out when he threw the Hale murders in the man’s face back in Eichen House, he isn’t going to do it now.

“We’ll figure out another way,” Stiles promises instead, because they _will_. They’re not going to stop until these hunters are either dead or wishing they were. He hesitates, licks his lips, then says in measured tones, “My dad used to say there’s no such thing as a perfect crime. Someone always misses something. It’s just a matter of who’s smarter.” His arms tighten around Peter. “And we’re definitely smarter than whatever idiot thought leaving _you_ of all people alive was a good idea for their long-term health and safety.”

Peter is quiet for a long minute before he huffs a laugh in response, and that’s genuine, if still somewhat subdued, but infinitely better compared to all that despair-driven fury from earlier.

“That was pretty stupid of them, wasn’t it?” Peter muses, and his words are underscored with steel once more. He straightens, still not letting Stiles go but drawing back far enough to meet Stiles’ gaze. “What would I do without you?”

It’s a rhetorical question, but Stiles hopes anyway that he’ll never have to find out.

“Come on,” He says instead, nudging Peter towards the head of the bed. “We can think more about it later. You’ve barely slept since before we went to Myers’ apartment _yesterday_ , and you’re the one who keeps telling me we’re still recovering. I _know_ you’re tired.”

Peter rolls his eyes but doesn’t protest, finally letting Stiles go but only long enough for them to climb under the sheets again before curling together once more.

Peter is warm, and Stiles will never not take shameless advantage of it.

The room falls silent, and the whir of the fan is quiet enough to coax them to slumber rather than keep them up.

“Stiles?” Peter whispers, sounding drowsy already.

“Hm?”

“Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

Peter falls asleep, snoring softly against his shoulder, one arm draped over Stiles’ waist. Stiles _wants_ to do the same, but, well, he’s never been very good at turning off his brain when it’s caught on to something and hasn’t made peace with it yet.

So he ends up staring unseeingly at the spinning fan on the ceiling instead as his mind turns, over and over, _someone always misses something_ , and yet whatever it is just won’t click into place.

A memory surfaces, abrupt and almost painful: a sunny afternoon spent at station, in the early days of Mama’s illness, when she was at another doctor’s appointment but was still clear-minded enough to absolutely kick up a fuss about leaving Stiles at home alone, and so the police of Beacon Hills volunteered to babysit him.

And that particular day, he’d finished all his homework and someone gave him a Sudoku book to keep him occupied instead. Some were easy, some took more thought, and then he’d gotten stuck on one that he just couldn’t figure out without randomly guessing.

And then a deputy - _Tara_ \- had wandered by between doing her own paperwork just as Stiles was ready to toss the whole book, possibly out the window, and she’d said, _“You know, when we’re solving a crime, sometimes, we get stuck too. When that happens, I find that the best thing to do is to look at something else, anything else, but something completely unrelated, and just spend a few minutes doing that. And then go back to the case. Review everything you already know, even the smallest, most insignificant detail. You might see something you missed the first time because you were too focused on only one part of the puzzle.”_

He’d solved that Sudoku - and two more besides - by the time he’d had to go home.

So, that’s what he does now. He lets his eyes wander over to Peter, who looks a little worn around the edges even in sleep. The earlier swim had reinforced his patience even if it also sapped his energy, but their failure tonight has done him no favours. Stiles knows that Peter - however much he’d been looking forward to making Myers pay - had also hung all his hopes on this lead, on finally finding out who’d murdered his entire pack even if he couldn’t get his hands on them just yet, and it was the latter being taken away - the possibility that he would _never_ be able to avenge his family - that hurt him far more than not being able to confront Myers himself.

Well, that’s what Stiles is here for - to help when Peter needs it. And to do that…

He takes a deep breath, his focus turning inward once more, and he casts his mind back all those months ago, rifling through every piece of information that Peter ever told him about the fire, and then every word written in that sham of a case report they stole.

_Someone always misses something._

_Derek’s girlfriend_ , Stiles thinks, and for some reason, that strikes him as most important because- _Girlfriends and boyfriends spend time together. It’s a requirement of dating. But Peter never mentioned Derek skipping school, and schools always report that sort of thing to parents, so Peter probably would’ve at least heard about it from his sister if Derek was skipping a lot to go meet up with some woman when he should’ve been in class._

_Conclusion: his girlfriend had to be either a student or a teacher in the same high school._

_Peter said she had to have been a hunter, and it’s improbable anyway for someone normal who’s lived in Beacon Hills all her life to up and hatch a plan to seduce a boy and kill an entire family, even if she suddenly learned about werewolves. Even movies aren’t that ridiculous. Besides, she would’ve had to arrange at least one bribe for the insurance investigator, and no way a normal girl can drop that much money just like that._

_Conclusion: either a transfer student from a hunter family or a hunter disguised as a substitute teacher._

_It’s rare,_ Stiles thinks, _for a boy to keep a relationship totally underwraps, even if his girlfriend claimed to be shy. They tend to boast. There was a boy in my grade - Jared? Justin? Jackson. - who started holding hands with a girl - Layla? Laura? Lydia. - one day, declared they were boyfriend and girlfriend, and everybody thought they were so cool. But Derek wouldn’t even give his family a name. Nothing about what classes they shared or when they started going out or even what she looked like. Only that mention of becoming a chef because of the pie his girlfriend gave him. Maybe it’s different for older kids, but usually, people only hide when they have something to hide. When they know they’ve done something other people wouldn’t approve of. When they know it could get them in trouble._

_Conclusion: Derek’s girlfriend was probably a hunter pretending to be a substitute teacher, filling in for one of Derek’s classes. Most likely, a one-year contract in Beacon Hills High School if she was still teaching in January. Leaving after term already started, right after the Hale fire, would’ve been suspicious. And to pull off the murder and subsequent cover-up so well, and against such an old and well-established pack to boot, she must’ve known what she was doing, she must’ve done it before, and to be able to pull five hundred thousand dollars out of her back pocket just to pay off one guy, she must’ve come from old money or had employers who came from old money. Experience and backing - probably an equally old and well-established hunter family._

And doesn’t that narrow the pool quite a bit because-

He shoots up in bed as the puzzle pieces click together, and he’s barely aware of Peter snapping awake too, half wolfed out and looking for a threat, as he scrambles out of bed and dives for his laptop.

“Stiles? What-?”

“I’m so stupid,” He declares, impatiently waiting for his laptop to boot up. “I should’ve thought about this ages ago.” The wifi connects and he quickly opens a new internet page. “ _Derek’s girlfriend_ , Peter, oh my god I’m so dumb.”

Peter rises from the bed, as wide awake as Stiles and frowning as he comes over and swats him over the head. “Don’t call yourself that. We agreed the hunters are stupid. Now what did you figure out?”

“Derek’s girlfriend,” Stiles repeats. “Was probably a teacher at his school for the whole year, that year.”

Peter’s expression blanks even as thoughts race behind his eyes, and he connects the dots as fast as Stiles did. Then he looks at the website Stiles clicked through to - _Beacon Hills High School_ ’s homepage - and his eyes widen with realization.

“I don’t think school websites list former employees though, Stiles,” Peter says slowly. “Only current staff members.”

“Right, they don’t,” Stiles agrees, searching the site for what he’s looking for. “But you know what does? _Yearbooks_. And there were already electronic versions back when I was still in elementary.”

He finds the link for old archived yearbooks, and a triumphant grin spreads across his face, only to falter when the next page asks for name and student ID of school alumni. “Oh. Um.”

Peter nudges him aside, and for a long minute, his hands rest motionless in the keyboard, eyes falling shut, a faint frown knitting his brow.

And then he opens his eyes and carefully types out a five-digit number, and then his first and last name.

He hits enter, and they only have to wait a moment before they’re in.

A long list of school terms spanning back ten years in chronological order appear on the screen, and under each year is a downloadable file link. Even further back, when yearbooks weren’t offered in digital form yet, links to very old photos have been uploaded instead.

And in the middle of it all, _2004-2005_ stares stark and black right back at them. Stiles is the one who clicks the link underneath it, and an entire eBook unfolds on the screen.

“...She probably didn’t have her picture taken,” Peter says, voice gone hoarse, eyes unblinking on the screen.

“Not a self-portrait at least,” Stiles agrees as he begins clicking through the yearbook. “And she probably tried to avoid any cameras, and went by a fake name too. But yearbooks have everything from club pictures to team photos, and I know there are dances and other social events in high school. She might’ve been caught in one of them. And don’t classes by homeroom get their pictures taken too? Elementary had class pictures at least, and they’re always taken at the beginning of the year right after the individuals. So if there’s one photo she couldn’t dodge, it would probably have been that one.”

It takes only another twenty minutes. They check the staff pages, just in case, but nobody jumps out at Peter, and none of the names of missing teachers listed at the end stand out to him either.

So they start scrolling through the rest of the yearbook, skipping the individual student portraits and skimming the various group photos, some formally posed, some not, anything with a teacher in it. One picture - winter formal, set in early January - includes a blurry-faced teacher chaperone in the background that makes Peter shift his weight, but he says nothing so they move on.

And then they reach the homeroom pictures, and halfway through, Peter jerks forward abruptly enough that he almost knocks the laptop from the desk, one hand shooting out like he wants to reach right through the screen.

“Wait, stop, there!”

The photo they’ve stopped at is the 2005 homeroom class for students with M- and N-surnames. They stand in three neat rows with expressions that range from cheerful to bored.

And on the left side, standing behind a particularly tall student so that part of her face is obscured, is a woman with glasses and dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail that falls forward over one shoulder. She seems to be in the process of angling her head away from the camera, and by a stroke of luck, the picture actually manages to capture _more_ of her face this way. If she’d simply stood there and stared straight ahead, only her eyes and forehead would’ve been visible.

She looks like someone’s English teacher. From what Stiles can see of her, she’s even dressed in a knitted turtleneck sweater. She’s pretty and has a playful - if distracted - smile.

And - when Stiles glances up - she looks like someone Peter would happily string up by her intestines. The werewolf’s eyes have turned an arctic blue again, and his fangs have dropped to form a grisly snarl.

He spits out only one word, but the two syllables contain enough vitriol that they might as well be poison, cut through with a dawning realization even as acidic loathing rushes in at its heels.

“ _Argent._ ”

 

* * *

 

Stiles has heard of the Argents from Peter, along with other well-known hunter families. Read about them too in a few of the books they took with them from the Vault, but hunter families didn’t much interest him beyond _potential threat to Peter_ and _kill if necessary_ , so he only mostly knows an overview of the kind of people they are.

Powerful. Wealthy. An empire at least four hundred years old in the making. Originated from France but operates mainly out of the States these days.

Prejudiced against werewolves in particular and anything not human in general. Trigger-happy. Professes to follow a Code but Peter’s never trusted that to hold them, especially if you listened to some of the whispers that stained their reputation.

And Gerard Argent in particular - head of the family and a man Peter has met a handful of times when packs and hunters met up to play nice and trade information and silently threaten each other - never could hide his abhorrence of their kind.

“That woman,” Peter explains, nodding at the photo from where he’s collapsed into a chair, hands tight around its arms. “Her name is Kate. Kate Argent, Gerard’s daughter. I’ve met her a few times.” He sneers. “She was blonde then. No glasses either. Gerard’s pride and joy, if he ever had one. I don’t doubt she went after my pack on his orders.” His jaw clenches. “Perfectly willingly of course. She’s just like him. Looks at werewolves like we’re no better than rabid dogs.” He releases a harsh bark of laughter. “She doesn’t seem to have any qualms about fucking one though if it means she gets to kill us too.”

Stiles studies her face again, imprints it into his mind. Hunters’ weapon of choice is usually a firearm of some kind. Kate doesn’t look like she’s capable of using one.

But Stiles is easy to underestimate too. If he ever meets her before Peter can kill her, he’ll make sure she burns.

He looks back at Peter. “So… do you know her address?”

Peter blinks, his gaze loses the thousand-yard glaze he’s been sporting since he sat down, and for a moment, he just stares at Stiles like he doesn’t know how to respond. Stiles doesn’t know why. That’s the logical next question, right?

And then Peter sits up and leans forward, and Stiles only has time to yelp before he’s hauled out of his own seat and into Peter’s lap, half-smooshed against the man’s chest before he manages to right himself. “What- Peter?”

Large hands cup his face, and Stiles goes still under Peter’s gaze and the way the blue in them positively _burn_. But there’s no anger there, no thirst for vengeance, no ice; only a fervent sort of warmth and an open admiration that puts heat in Stiles’ cheeks.

“You found her,” Peter says, voice rough with an emotion Stiles can’t name. “You clever, brilliant boy, _you found her, thank you_.”

Stiles flounders for something to say even as he tries not to preen, because honestly, he should’ve thought of this weeks ago. He can’t believe it’s taken him so long.

But Peter’s looking at him like he’s done something great, and at least for now, Stiles can’t quite bring himself to reject the gratitude and appreciation all aimed at him.

Still, “We’re Pack,” he reminds Peter, trying to think of words that won’t embarrass them both. He can’t, so he gives up and just says what he believes. “You don’t have to thank me, because you’re always welcome.”

And all the embarrassment in the world, he thinks, is worth the quiet joy that blooms across Peter’s face, beautiful and fragile and absolutely priceless.

 

* * *

 

Peter does apparently know Kate Argent’s address. Or rather, he knows where the Argents’ family compound is located, and so the closest nearby city is where they go next.

Stiles isn’t a huge fan of cities. They’re rowdy and smelly and bustling with activity day and night, and Chicago feels twice as bad of everything. It takes almost two weeks to drive there, Peter books them one of the bigger rooms in a hotel, and they basically move in indefinitely.

They get a few odd sideways glances from the front desk when they first check in - a man and a boy living in a hotel is weird no matter how you look at it - but Peter’s charming when he wants to be, and it’s not hard for Stiles to act the part of a spoiled rich kid taking a year off after graduating a year early, staying under the eye of his bachelor uncle, who travels often for work, while he visits colleges he might be interested in next year.

Stiles is still too small for sixteen - a couple months of regular meals isn’t going to change that - but you’d be shocked what expensive clothes and sunglasses and headphones and his nose perpetually glued to his phone is capable of. Coupled with a few misleading conversations, and the hotel staff suddenly doesn’t think anything about them is out of the ordinary. Just another annoyingly rich family with money to waste.

They head upstairs with most of their luggage, into a room that’s fancier than anything Stiles has stayed in before. There are plenty of windows - that come with curtains - and when he peers outside, he sees that they’re high enough for the people down below on the streets to look like small moving dots amidst a ton of bright lights.

There’s so _many_ people though, and more traffic than Stiles has ever seen. They’ve passed through cities before, but not a major one like this, and so far they’ve only stayed in inns or motels or out-of-the-way hotels, or even just in their car.

The noise is probably the worst.

Stiles retreats from the sight. Peter is unpacking their clothes in one of the bedrooms so Stiles wanders into the open-plan kitchen, all smooth floorboards and wide spaces and porch doors leading onto the balcony. There’s a bar table and comfy-looking couches and a fluffy carpet, and even the colours are pretty nice. In his socks, it’s easy to slip-slide his way from one side of the room to the other before letting himself tumble over one arm of a sofa and flopping onto it with a cushy _fwump_.

“Having fun?” Peter’s come to lean against one wall, watching Stiles with fond amusement.

Stiles sits up with a grin. “This place is pretty cool I guess.” He glances around again. “I like the space.”

Space without it being _too_ spacious. Walls without bars. Safety without captivity. Big enough to feel like he can still breathe, but not so much that it makes anxiety prickle in his stomach. He has no serious problems going outside, he _likes_ the outdoors so long as there aren’t too many people surrounding him, but for someplace he’s going to live in, this is perfect.

“Hmm,” Peter nods thoughtfully. “I’ll keep this in mind when we finally get around to getting a proper house.”

Stiles blinks at him. Peter rolls his eyes.

“We won’t be on the road forever,” The man reminds him as he ducks out of sight again with another luggage bag in hand. “And one day, I’d like for us to be able to call someplace our own.”

Stiles leans back and mulls that over for a while. It’s not like he didn’t know. One day, Peter will have his revenge, his family will have their justice, and… well, Stiles will still be there for as long as Peter wants him at his side. It’s still a little startling though, to hear that’s Peter been thinking about a _house_ , about something permanent just for them.

Startling, but reassuring too.

“Not in Beacon Hills though?” Stiles calls back, because even if he makes up with his dad tomorrow and turns Eichen House into a crater while he’s at it, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to live in that town again without forever looking over his shoulder.

“No,” Peter agrees, appearing again and making his way to the kitchen area to begin checking the contents of the cabinets. “Not Beacon Hills.” His hands pause, and something like a tired sort of grief drifts across his features. “The Hale lands are as good as lost. I suppose I could claim them myself but… even if I could create a new pack stable enough to guard the territory, I don’t think I could stand living there for any length of time anymore, and I know you feel the same.”

He shrugs like such a simple gesture could lay to rest the ghosts of an entire family wiped out overnight. Stiles has nothing to offer to make things better, but when Peter goes back to checking the pots and pans, Stiles rises from the couch and joins him. Their elbows bump, and Peter leans over to scent him for a moment, running fingers through his hair before pressing his cheek to Stiles’ temple.

They work together over the next hour or so, unpacking most of their belongings for the first time since leaving Beacon Hills.

They’ll be here for a while. Might as well get comfortable.

 

* * *

 

Confronting the Argents won’t be like confronting Myers. Myers was one baseline human who’d probably never even held a gun before. The Argents kill for a _living_. And probably as a hobby too.

Also, their ancestral home is like Fort Knox, or so Peter says. A veritable fortress.

“You know, that’s probably the one thing that’s not gonna be much of a problem,” Stiles points out, absently squinting at algebra equations in the textbook he’s reading. “You wanna get in there, I’ll get you in there.”

Peter rolls his eyes from where he’s lounging in an armchair and studying the exterior of the Argent property through Google Maps. Stiles took a glance earlier and he already clocked at least half a dozen security cameras.

“We still need to know who’s in there and when,” Peter says. “Blasting the doors down and storming in isn’t going to do us much good if nobody’s home. That will just alert Kate and Gerard and whoever else lives there, and unfortunately, they’re not stupid enough to _not_ go to ground, at least until they figure out who’s going after them and how many other hunters they can round up to start a manhunt for us.”

Stiles pouts. He hasn’t used his magic much after Eichen House, certainly not anything on that scale. But Peter is right too. Rushing in won’t help if there’s no welcoming party waiting for them.

“But I do like the idea of causing a spectacle,” Peter adds. “Something that would undoubtedly draw police attention even with their property so far outside city limits.”

Stiles finishes solving for _x_ in the latest question. He’s sprawled on the carpet with a beanbag chair at his back, and when he looks up, Peter is staring expectantly back at him.

“You want them to know,” Stiles says slowly. “You want to kill Kate and Gerard and whoever else was part of it, but you want to destroy their reputation too. You want people to know they’re guilty. So… we’re gonna frame them?”

Peter smirks. “We’re going to frame them. I thought we could make it look like an internal disagreement that got violently out of hand. There’s certainly enough firepower on their property to militarize a private army.” He turns back to his laptop. “We just have to make sure every bit of evidence we can dig up for every crime we can lay at their feet is also there when law enforcement shows up. And people like the Argents are definitely the type to keep records, trophies,” His lip curls with contempt. “Reminders of their proud legacy.”

“We have to make sure we _aren’t_ there though,” Stiles adds even as he hooks a foot around Peter’s ankle. “Killing their cameras is probably a good first step, but we need an escape route that isn’t gonna leave us face to face with the cops.”

Peter hums pensively. “Well, the response time is bound to be slow. The Argent property might as well be in the middle of nowhere. It’s an hour’s drive from this city, a little less if they speed, so we’ll have about that much time to get in, kill them, and get out. I’ll look into that. There’s no rush.”

Stiles nods and bites back the first thing that comes to mind. He looks at his hands instead and lets a shimmer of gold wash over them. Honestly, if he wants to, he could probably level the Argent property by himself and kill everyone inside while he’s at it. It’s the easiest, most logical route to take at the moment. Definitely less risky even if he’ll be exhausted afterwards.

But.

But in the end, this is Peter’s revenge, something Peter feels he needs to do in order to get closure for both himself and his family, something that would make the weight of being the only survivor… not _fine_ , but tolerable, something he would be able to shoulder and still move on with his life.

Stiles promised to be there with him every step of the way. Wrapping him in cotton and doing all the work for him may be safer for him, but it also feels less of a kindness and more of a mockery of the kind of man Peter is - unshakeably loyal to the core, even in death, and the only one left alive who cares enough to rail against the unfairness of it all and is capable enough to _do_ something about it too.

So Stiles can’t take that away from him, even if it’s tempting. What he _can_ do is be there and make sure Peter is still alive when they come out on the other side.

Besides, if he just disintegrates everything, the cops might find it a tad suspicious.

A hand appearing in his line of sight makes him blink, and gold light disperses in a shower of sparks when Peter reaches down to tangle their fingers together. The werewolf’s typing one-handed now, eyes on the screen, but Stiles smiles anyway and just fits their palms together more securely.

He turns back to his algebra, Peter’s hand warm in his own.

 

* * *

 

They spend the next week splitting their time between solving the Argent problem and acting like actual tourists. The hotel alone has enough amenities to occupy Stiles’ attention for at least a few days. For once, they wake up at normal morning hours and go down for complimentary breakfasts - Stiles used to _love_ Eggs Benedict, especially at his favourite diner, complete with curly fries, and he could swear it tastes even better now.

They go out. They pick a - relatively - less busy time of day, and they venture out into the city to explore a little.

(They pass by a pizza place with open windows and one of those big traditional stoves. A flame leaps, and Peter almost wolfs out right in the middle of the street. They have to duck into a nearby alley, and Stiles won’t ever tell anyone about the way Peter crouched on the ground and clutched at Stiles’ wrists and couldn’t stop shaking until he learned to breathe again.)

They visit the University of Chicago just to see what a campus looks like.

(They’re leaving just as a bunch of classes let out, and the crowd of chattering students all rushing towards their next destination almost makes Stiles freeze on the spot, his breath going short as people shove past him in overwhelming waves. By the time Peter steers him to a more secluded spot in the shade of some trees, Stiles has dug indents into Peter’s arm, and it takes him a full five minutes before he’s finally able to fight down the panic attack.)

They don’t go out every day, but… they try. They spend an evening on the quieter boardwalk, and that’s a little easier. They go to a museum, and even with other people there, the place automatically puts a hush on people, and they’re able to relax enough to enjoy the exhibits.

And of course, they go to a library in the city and end up making an entire day of it, just whiling the hours away inside, reading whatever they want.

Still, it’s… difficult. Stiles can’t remember going outside ever being this difficult. Obvious things set him off, but things he doesn’t expect do too, for him and Peter both. They visit the aquarium, and Stiles takes one look at the animals in the tanks and has to walk right back out. They eat at a sushi restaurant, and the glint of the sushi chef’s knife makes Peter flinch.

Stiles hates it, and judging by Peter’s frustrated expression, he does too.

It would be so much easier to just stay in the hotel all day. But they can’t do that all the time, not if they don’t want Eichen House to _win_ , and so they try.

At least they have each other, and if nothing else, they never have to try alone.

 

* * *

 

“Stiles, have you seen my phone?” Peter asks, checking his coat pockets with a frown.

Stiles glances up from where he’s reading about Mesopotamian civilization. “No? You had it today when we went out though. Did you leave it in the car?”

“Well, if it’s not here, probably,” Peter sighs. He’s already in slippers and a bathrobe, and his brow is also creased with more frustration than a misplaced phone should deserve. But Stiles knows he’s spent the past several days talking to a couple hackers who owe him favours, none of whom have been able to dig up the blueprints to the Argent property for him. At least not one with all the traps and security measures they’ve undoubtedly installed.

“I’ll go get it,” Stiles volunteers, setting his textbook aside and untangling his legs from his mother’s quilt. He’s washed the smell out of it, and it’s still as soft and warm as it used to be so he’s glad he took it with him, even with some of the memories attached.

Peter sighs gratefully and tosses him the keys. “Thanks. It should be in the cup holder.”

Stiles nods and heads for the door, swiping up his sunglasses as he goes. He almost never leaves the room without them anymore. He prefers them over contacts; not only do they hide the colour of his eyes, they also mute sunlight, and he doesn’t have to worry about aching eyes if he leaves them on too long. And sensitive eyes is a good enough excuse for anyone who might ask why he wears sunglasses indoors. “Be right back.”

The door swings shut behind him, and he makes his way down the hall towards the elevators, shifting his weight impatiently as he waits for the lift to arrive.

They never, ever go out without each other. But inside the hotel, they’ve finally stopped needing to stay in each other’s back pocket. Peter fetches ice on his own. Stiles sometimes goes for a swim early in the morning when Peter wants to sleep in. They’ve both poked around the hotel lobby and shops separately, although they do keep their phones on them on those occasions.

Not that they really use them. Stiles literally only has Peter’s number saved on his, while Peter has a few more only because of the handful of contacts he’s gotten in touch with since their escape. Still, it’s a means of contact should they ever need it.

It’s a matter of minutes to make his way to the parking lot and find Peter’s phone, a duplicate of his own. He’s halfway back to the elevators again when he feels eyes on him, which makes him stop in his tracks before he can consider pretending not to realize he knows he’s being watched. The parking garage is a silent graveyard of cars, and if there’s someone here, Stiles can’t hear them.

Concerned alarm skitters across the back of his mind, and Stiles is pretty sure that’s Peter sensing something wrong. He can’t feel their pack bond the way Peter’s described it, but he can still feel the werewolf’s presence.

Stiles doesn’t want to worry him though. His magic hasn’t spiked the way it does when there’s immediate danger, although it is simmering warily just beneath his fingertips.

The eyes disappear. And then reappear somewhere behind him. Stiles turns. There’s no one there except looming shadows cast by the sparse lighting.

Shadows.

He stares for a moment longer. And then - with a flex of his hands - he lets his magic flood the parking lot in a wash of blinding gold.

Someone swears. Even Stiles can’t see through the sheer brightness, but every corner of this garage is now _his_ , his magic touches it all, and it takes only a thought for three cords of gold to snake out in the direction of the voice, coiling tight around their captured prey before _yanking_ him out of their hiding place and dumping him right in front of Stiles.

The light clears. Red eyes stare back at him out of a face that stirs a fleeting memory in Stiles’ mind. He has black hair tied back in a ponytail, and when he grins, Stiles can see fangs. He’s also smoking a little from where Stiles’ magic is pressed against his bare skin, bound tight around his neck and wrists and ankles as he kneels at Stiles’ feet.

The man doesn’t seem to care, even managing a huff of a laugh that sounds almost delighted. “I suppose it was foolish to think someone who tore down Eichen House wouldn’t be able to sense me.” His red eyes meet Stiles’ gaze squarely. “We meet again, little Spark.”

Stiles frowns in confusion. He doesn’t get a chance to ask though before a door on his left leading to the emergency stairs bursts open, and Peter barrels out into the parking lot, eyes flashing dangerously the moment he catches sight of Stiles and the man he caught. He’s barefoot but he’s still in his bathrobe - at the moment, it doesn’t make him look any less of a threat.

“Vampire,” Peter growls, stalking over with his claws unsheathed. “What do you want?”

Stiles glances between them. “Do we know him?”

“Have you forgotten me already?” The apparent vampire affects a wounded look. “I’m hurt.”

“You freed him from Eichen House, sweetheart, remember?” Peter replies, ignoring the vampire’s response. “Among others, but we actually talked to this one.” His eyes seem to burn an even colder blue. “Well?”

The vampire - and now that Peter’s reminded him, Stiles can recall the black-eyed prisoner they’d met briefly before Stiles wrecked the prison - sighs and gives them both a pointed look like the answer should be obvious. “I owe a debt. I’m here to pay it.”

 _Obviously_ , goes unspoken.

Stiles actually doesn’t remember this guy having much of a personality. But then, he barely remembers this guy, period, so maybe it’s just him.

“I had to feed first,” The vampire continues when neither Stiles nor Peter says anything. “Get myself back on a… healthier diet. But I came to find you afterwards.”

“How did you find us?” Peter demands, and yeah, Stiles kind of wants to know that too.

The vampire glances at Stiles before blinking once at Peter with a slow deliberateness that somehow conveys a world of incredulity. “How could I not? You may as well ask how one finds the sky. Your… sweetheart-” His voice lilts with something between amusement and mockery, and it makes Peter glare. “-radiates more power than anyone I have ever met. For those who know what to look for, he leaves a very obvious trail.”

Stiles tenses. Exactly what kind of trail are they talking about here?

“Obvious for certain people who have come into contact with your magic,” The vampire amends as if reading Stiles’ thoughts. Can vampires read other people’s thoughts? “It is not something tangible. Well,” He glances down at the ropes still blistering his skin. “Not when you’re not actively using your Spark anyway.”

Stiles stares at him for a moment longer, then looks at Peter whose gaze has narrowed in thought. “Spark?”

“That’s a myth,” Peter says flatly.

The vampire scoffs and nods at Stiles. “Clearly not.”

Peter glances over at him. Stiles shrugs. It’s not like he particularly cares what he is. Being a Spark just sounds like… a special name for being able to make stuff really bright. Or make stuff explode. It doesn’t actually change anything. But the vampire seems to think it’s meaningful, and Stiles isn’t entirely comfortable with someone he doesn’t know knowing something about him that he doesn’t.

Peter nods, and Stiles is satisfied with getting an explanation later. For now…

He considers the vampire for a moment longer before finally pulling back his magic. Peter makes a disgruntled noise and steps forward to stand half a foot in front of Stiles but he doesn’t attack.

“Nobody else followed me?” Stiles asks, speaking directly to the vampire for the first time.

Said vampire rubs his wrists and rises, but only as far as onto one knee. He’s wearing a dark red dress shirt and black pants, only slightly ruffled by their encounter as if he gets into fights in parking lots all the time. He shakes his head. “No, as far as I am aware. And since you noticed me straight away, I doubt they would be able to get past your guard anyway.”

“Or maybe you’re just bad at hiding,” Peter mutters caustically.

The vampire arches an eyebrow and somehow gives the impression of rolling his eyes without actually rolling his eyes. “Peace, werewolf. I have no designs on your sweetheart.”

 _Huh?_ Stiles looks from Peter to the vampire and back again. Peter just looks plain irritated now, but underneath that, Stiles can just make out the faintest hint of embarrassment.

He sighs and double-checks his inner word bank. He’s pretty sure he remembers what “no designs” means, but sometimes, phrases still get lost somewhere between his brain and his memory. He doesn’t think the vampire has any designs on him either; his magic’s not leaping for the guy’s throat anyway so he’s probably not here to harm Stiles. Stiles doesn’t know why he would anyway. It seems a waste of the vampire’s newfound freedom when he could be - and has been - doing other things.

“Well, anyway,” Stiles interjects. “You don’t owe me anything. We never made a deal or whatever. I destroyed all the cells cuz I wanted to.” He pauses, and then just in case he isn’t being clear enough, he adds, “So you can go back to doing your own thing.”

For the first time, the vampire looks a little taken aback. “...I gave my word. I have never been in the habit of going back on it. You have no need to acknowledge it, but the debt is there should you require it.”

Stiles stares, and then he turns to Peter and stares some more.

Peter snorts and finally eases up on his battle-ready stance. “Incurred debts of the verbal kind hold more weight in the supernatural world,” He admits. “Although most resort to a blood vow or something similar these days to make sure of it.”

The vampire’s features flatten into something full of disdain but all he says is, “If you require one, I would not mind.”

Stiles heaves a sigh. “The whole point is that I don’t need...” He waves a hand to encompass everything. He just came down here to fetch Peter’s phone.

He looks at Peter again, who makes a moue of distaste but advises, “It isn’t… a _hindrance_ to have a vampire at your beck and call.” The vampire turns half-lidded ruby eyes on Peter again, this time accompanied by an annoyed sort of mirth that Peter smirks right back at. “And you can always just send him away until you do need the favour.”

“Indeed,” The vampire agrees. “It’s partly why I came.” He slips a hand into a pocket, slowly enough that it doesn’t do more than make both Peter and Stiles hone in on the movement, and retrieves a phone. “My number, should you need my… area of expertise.”

 _Area of expertise_.

“What _is_ your area of expertise?” Stiles asks, turning sharply back to the vampire. And then without waiting for an answer, he tacks on, “How did you do that hiding thing before? I couldn’t hear you or see you, and I think you jumped from one place to another once. How did you do that?”

The vampire watches him for a moment before his smile returns, sharper this time, and gilded with something like approval. He finally gets to his feet in one fluid motion, and at his full height, he stands half a head taller than Peter, never mind Stiles.

“I am no nogitsune or shadow mage or demon,” The vampire says. “True shadow manipulation is beyond my abilities. But some of my kind have lived long enough to learn to use the shadows as… camouflage, you could say. We can hide in them, and for the more experienced of us, so long as they’re connected, we can travel short distances through them. Very little can stop us, although-” His expression darkens for a moment. “-my lovely cell in Eichen House was certainly equipped to prevent it.” He pauses. “Have you need of such services?”

Stiles is already turning excitedly back to Peter, who sighs very deeply because he is a drama queen.

“Well your hackers aren’t cutting it,” Stiles points out, and Peter makes an offended face at him. Stiles flaps a hand at the vampire. “C’mon, Peter, this is perfect! He’s like… my contact!” He beams. “I have a contact now!”

Peter snorts with reluctant amusement, but he’s also practical, and they haven’t gotten anywhere with getting a better idea of the Argent property’s interior.

“We’ll talk about it,” The werewolf relents, and that’s as good as a yes. He flashes fangs at the vampire. “Come back in the morning.”

The vampire turns very deliberately to Stiles and arches a questioning eyebrow.

“We’ll meet you for breakfast,” Stiles offers. “At the restaurant in the lobby. We can talk then.”

The vampire inclines his head. “As you wish. I shall be back tomorrow.” He gives Stiles a searching look. “May I know the name of my saviour?”

Stiles grimaces. “I’m not-” He sighs. “I’m Stiles. And this is Peter.” He pauses, belatedly realizing he doesn’t know this guy’s name, or he’s forgotten. “Who are you?”

Peter’s expression doesn’t change, but Stiles can totally feel the petty amusement radiating from him.

If the vampire notices, he ignores it this time. Instead, he sketches a half-bow in Stiles’ direction, “I am Auguste Durand of the Durand Coven. At your service,” He smiles, perfectly civilized but for the hint of fang. “This one time.”

Well, that’s fine. One time is all Stiles and Peter needs.

 

* * *

 

“You don’t like him,” Stiles says as soon as they’re back in the privacy of their hotel room again. “Is the vampire and werewolf hating each other thing real?”

“...They smell like death, and they have no heartbeat,” Peter grumbles as he sheds his bathrobe and steps into the bathroom for a moment to rinse off his feet. “I wouldn’t say we have any kind of inborn hatred for each other, we usually have to do something to each other first, just like any other species, but it makes me uneasy when I can’t hear or smell anything substantial from someone. Werewolves depend a lot on a person’s scent and heartbeat to gauge whether they can be trusted or not.

“That’s not why I don’t like _him_ though,” He adds huffily. “What kind of suspicious character creeps on teenagers in parking lots at night anyway?”

Stiles blinks at that. “It’s weird?”

“ _Very_ ,” Peter insists as they get ready for bed.

Oh. Stiles didn’t really think of it like that. Logically speaking, if you want to sneak up on someone or speak to them in private, you’d usually corner them somewhere dark with no witnesses around, right?

“It’s fine though,” Stiles decides. “Since I caught him and everything, and my magic didn’t feel anything off about him. And speaking of my magic…”

Peter stills for a moment before nodding. “Right, I’ll explain. Come to bed first.”

They climb under the sheets, and Peter switches off the lamp, cloaking them in comfortable darkness. Stiles curls into Peter’s side, and Peter pulls the comforter up over their shoulders.

“As far as I know,” Peter starts in pensive tones. “Sparks have always been a myth. People who’ve trained to become druids or witches or even mages - they’re all born with magic, but only enough to act as something of a conduit. They gather the natural magical energy they need to fuel whatever magic they’re performing from the elements around them, then the magic inside them gives back the energy that is owed, and then they channel what they took into rituals or potions or spells. Regular people without that magical core can follow all the steps exactly, but they still wouldn’t be able to make any of it work because they have nothing to offer in exchange for the earth’s magic they would need.

“Sparks are different though,” The cadence of Peter’s voice takes on something like wonder. “They’re also born with magic, just far more of it than the average magic-user. Information on them is sketchy at best, not to mention sparse, and they read more like stories than facts, but the basic gist of it is - a Spark’s magic is as powerful and diverse as they will it to be, and it doesn’t depend on the earth’s magical energy to sustain them. The magic tends to manifest in a specific form once the Spark has matured - so usually after puberty - but what they can do with that magic is entirely up to them. They’re not restricted by nature’s laws the way druids and witches and mages are - for example, where the latter can’t produce a healing spell for an injury without killing something else in the process, Sparks can so long as their belief is strong enough. You could say there’s no _price_ on what a Spark is capable of, no _limit_.”

Here, Peter pauses and pulls back a little to study Stiles for a moment. “I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised that you’re a Spark, if what our new vampire friend said was true. Your magic is certainly… well. I just thought you happened to be stronger than most magic-users and so you could give back enough of your own energy to the world to channel as much magic as you want. But still, the number of ways you’ve managed to wield that light of yours is a little strange, now that I think about it. Usually, the average magic-user can only specialize in one area, maybe two. Even if they’re knowledgeable in others, they just don’t have the kind of power they would need to support so many different kinds of energy in their bodies in order to produce more than a handful of skills. But I’ve seen you use that light of yours for everything from a makeshift flashlight to a bomb to an automatic defense mechanism to a lie-detector, and after today, even physical ropes. And that’s not counting all the times you just play with it like it’s your personal glowing stress ball. That… is admittedly not normal.”

The werewolf pauses again, and then amends with a smug sort of pride, “Well, not normal for the average supernatural masses anyway. You’ve always been amazing, sweetheart.”

Stiles rolls his eyes at that and pretends he isn’t also basking a little in Peter’s opinion of him. Mostly though, he spends a long minute just digesting everything Peter’s told him. It’s… never really occurred to him to put a label on exactly what he can do. He had magic that could ( _kill_ ) protect him, and that was about as much as he thought he needed to know about it, in his mind.

“You said,” Stiles finally says haltingly. “That a Spark’s magic takes a specific form once we’ve matured?”

“Hm, yes,” Peter replies. “Well, first of all, I suspect yours kicked in early because… you needed it. Desperately. Because your mother was going to kill you otherwise.”

Stiles doesn’t flinch. He supposes it’s odd. Sometimes, thinking about Claudia still makes him want to curl up in a corner and laugh or maybe cry or maybe scream until he loses his voice; the rest of the time he just plain doesn’t care anymore. He thinks back - _I killed Mama_ \- and it feels like someone else did it. Or it feels like he did it, but the person he killed wasn’t really his mom. Or it _was_ his mom, and he just feels… nothing.

It’s confusing, so he tries not to linger too much on it at all.

Peter’s hand moves, rubbing soothing lines down his back, and even through a shirt, it’s a warm reassuring weight to Stiles.

“And secondly,” Peter continues. “The two accounts I once read on supposed Sparks indicated that it’s the Spark’s experiences throughout their childhood - their formative years - that shape the form their magic ultimately takes. One of those Sparks grew up near a body of water that was home to a group of nymphs. She spent her entire childhood interacting with them like family. I don’t know how true that is, but when she became of age, her magic apparently manifested as water even though it was capable of things like healing and seduction just by wrapping that water around the wound or her target.

“You though, your magic manifested as light,” The werewolf sounds more thoughtful now. “Capable of other abilities, but first and foremost, your magic is light.”

He falls silent for a moment, the hand at Stiles’ back going still even though it remains pressed between his shoulder blades.

“Man created light in the form of fire to stay warm,” Peter finally says, almost too quiet for Stiles to hear. “To defend themselves. To guide them through the dark. To _survive_. A symbol of hope just as much as a means of destruction. If you think of it that way, your magic really couldn’t have taken on any form but that.”

Stiles is silent for a long while after that, staring distantly at a point over Peter’s shoulder. Peter doesn’t interrupt. It’s one of Stiles’ favourite things about him.

He thinks about it, casts his mind back to that day in the hospital room when he vaporized his mother’s heart, to all the times the doctors tried to strap him to a table - conscious and unconscious - and he killed them too until they had no choice but to bind his powers and turn their more invasive cruelties on the other inmates. In the end, he frightened them enough that they wouldn’t risk cutting him open even while he was cuffed because they didn’t want to find out if doing so would result in his magic becoming powerful enough to destroy the manacles and level the building once and for all.

It didn’t save him from Eichen House though. Didn’t save him from seven years in that hellhole, because even if it wasn’t _as bad_ as it could’ve been, it certainly wasn’t a vacation either.

But…

But if it had been capable of it, of breaking him out back when he was still ten or eleven or any of the years before Peter finally woke up properly, where then would Peter be now? Because as much as Stiles needed Peter to free his magic, _Peter_ needed Stiles just as much to escape Eichen House.

If Stiles hadn’t been there when Peter was abandoned to the nonexistent mercies of Eichen House’s doctors, the werewolf would most likely have remained locked up in that place until the day he died. Until even his supernatural healing factor couldn’t keep up anymore. Until the doctors had no more use for him.

Peter would still be trapped in that hell right now. And Stiles - even if he was free, he would be alone.

And that. That is a future not worth thinking about, an outcome Stiles rejects with every fibre of his being. He would rather die than lose Peter. Life without the werewolf… simply isn’t worth living.

And maybe his magic knew that, or maybe it was just coincidence, or maybe when it comes down to it, Sparks have to pay their price for what the most important things too-- but if Peter Hale is what he gets in exchange for seven years in Eichen House’s clutches, then Stiles can say with absolute certainty that it is a price he would gladly pay every single time.

“Stiles?”

Peter’s concerned voice draws him out of his thoughts, and belatedly, Stiles realizes one of his hands has gone white-knuckled around Peter’s arm, and shimmering petals of light flex like a butterfly’s wings on the man’s skin.

He quickly relaxes his grip and tugs his magic back. “Sorry.”

He feels Peter shrug. “It isn’t as if it hurts, dear boy; I don’t mind. But are you alright?”

Stiles just wriggles forward a bit to cushion his head against Peter’s shoulder. “I’m fine.” He hesitates, and then decides Peter should hear it from him, “I’m glad I met you. I’m glad I needed you to get out. I’m glad I had to wait for you.”

Peter goes so still for a moment that he even stops breathing. When he starts again, Stiles can feel the tremble in the fingers that come up to brush over his temple, his cheek, along his jaw, light as feathers.

He doesn’t say thank-you. He doesn’t say anything. But his eyes are a vivid bright blue, like the hottest of fires, and the way he looks at Stiles - like he’s everything precious in the world - says more than words could ever convey.

 

* * *

 

They almost fall asleep after that, curled around each other, but Peter murmurs just before Stiles dozes off, “I have been meaning to ask, Stiles, and now seems as good a time as any. You don’t have to tell me but I have wondered - after your Spark manifested to defend you, your father’s response was to check you in to Eichen House. ...Do you know why?”

Stiles blinks sleepily at the werewolf. “Mm, I guess cuz it was a nuthouse, and I apparently went crazy and killed my mom? I mean, it was probably either that or jail, and Dad… probably didn’t hate me enough to try and send me to juvie, and Eichen House is legal with certified doctors and everything. On the surface.”

Peter makes a face at the pun, but for some reason, he also squints dubiously at Stiles. “You killed someone in a way nobody could explain, and the next thing that happens is you get shipped off to the only mental health facility on the west coast that incidentally has a supernatural prison hidden underground?”

Stiles frowns. “It’s… the closest one to Beacon Hills?”

“Beacon Hills Memorial has a psychiatric ward,” Peter points out. “That’s where your mother was placed, wasn’t she?”

Stiles opens his mouth, then closes it again when nothing comes out.

“Maybe the staff was scared,” He says at last. “So they recommended Eichen House to my dad instead.”

Peter hums skeptically. “Do you remember if the Sheriff talked to anybody in particular? Someone other than your mother’s attending nurses and doctors?”

Stiles thinks back, hard, but that period of time - from gasping for breath and staring down at a body that was bleeding from her nose and mouth and head to stumbling out of the car as the Sheriff half-led, half-dragged him into Eichen House - is honestly just a blur of grey and muted white noise in his mind.

He shakes his head. Peter nods and tugs Stiles close again. “That’s fine. Never mind. It was just a thought I had. Perhaps it was just an unlucky coincidence.”

Stiles peers up at him. Peter quirks a slight smile. “But… do you mind if I look into it? It just seems odd to me, that’s all.”

Stiles shrugs and snuggles down for the night again. “Knock yourself out.”

 _He_ doesn’t care. What matters is that he _did_ end up in Eichen House; _how_ he got there doesn’t really change the outcome. But if Peter wants to know, then that’s fine too. Stiles is sure the man will tell him if he comes up with anything.

 

* * *

 

“So you don’t burn up under the sun or anything?” Stiles asks over breakfast in a corner of the hotel restaurant, far enough from other people for their conversation to remain private. “Since you’re okay with meeting us for breakfast.”

Auguste, fork and knife held elegantly in his hands as he eats his french toast, smiles serenely across the table. “I do not. For those of my kind who have lived past three centuries, we become impervious to the effects sunlight has on younger vampires. We’re still sensitive to it, and most are usually more active during the night, but it is no longer lethal to us.”

“Hrrm,” Stiles mumbles out around a mouthful of hashbrowns. Another myth debunked.

“We don’t even sparkle,” Auguste adds, apropos of nothing.

Stiles blinks at him, then glances at Peter to see if this is some kind of supernatural creature in-joke. But Peter looks equally blank. Also annoyed, but mostly blank. As one, they stare at Auguste, who stares back from behind sunglasses before sighing.

“My apologies,” He offers. “That was rude of me. It’s a reference from a relatively popular book series, the first of which was published… I believe, late 2005. I assume you were captured before then.”

Well, yeah. Even Peter was snatched by Eichen House sometime early February of that year.

“Right,” Stiles says. Sparkling vampires. Cool. He makes the executive decision to move on. “Well anyway, if you’re serious about owing me, we could use your help with something that your shadow-walking can get us, and doing it during the day might give you more shadows to work with.”

“I see,” Auguste peers between them, glasses slipping just enough for them to get a glimpse of assessing red eyes. “And what is this endeavour I shall be aiding you in?”

Stiles exchanges another look with Peter, this one far more weighted. They’d discussed - earlier this morning before they came down - what they would say to Auguste, and they’d settled on… most of the truth, in the end. Better for the vampire to get the full picture than just a part and risking him bailing when he realizes just who he would be going up against. Most supernatural creatures don’t dare cross the Argents apparently. They’re that famous. And that infamous.

“We’re gonna go kill at least a couple Argents,” Stiles says bluntly. “And probably more than a couple other hunters working for them.”

Auguste doesn’t do anything as uncouth as choke or spit out the tea he’s just lifted to his lips. But everything about him seems to shut down upon hearing Stiles’ words, and it’s suddenly like looking at a very realistic marble statue, motionless in a way that would be impossible for any living being still capable of heart attacks.

Then he blinks, finishes his sip, and sets down his drink. “You wish to declare war on the Argent family? Is this a vendetta? Have they wronged you?”

Stiles wrinkles his nose. Does it have to sound so dramatic? “Uh, yeah, well, no, they didn’t wrong _me_ , they wronged Peter, but Peter and I are Pack so I’m gonna help him kill them. I… wouldn’t say it’s a war exactly? I mean the general plan is just going into their house and gutting them all.”

He looks at Peter, who takes over smoothly, with only the slightest edge of a sneer. “I’m not sure how official a vendetta can be when the technical head of my former pack doesn’t care, but you can think of it that way if it makes you feel better.” His eyes flash for a second. “They killed my pack. I’m going to kill them.”

Auguste stares at him for a long minute, and there’s no passive-aggressive mockery in his expression. It’s almost as if he’s really seeing Peter for the first time.

“You’re a Hale,” He says at last. “Beacon Hills. The pack that fell six years ago to a house fire.” He cocks his head in a strangely animal way. “There was probably no one in the supernatural community who didn’t find that suspicious.”

Peter’s lips twist into a smirk so tight it looks carved into his face. “And yet not a single Hale Pack ally came to investigate. That’s loyalty for you.”

Auguste shrugs, but not like he disagrees even as he explains, “If it was truly not an accident, then it was probably hunters. And if it was hunters, only one of the old lines would have had the gall to strike against one of the oldest and most stable packs in America for no reason. That does not leave many culprits, and none whom anyone with sense would have risked their lives to accuse, especially when they would have been doing it on behalf of a pack already more or less wiped out. The Alpha heiress and her remaining beta dropped off the face of the planet, neither of them cried foul play as far as anyone is aware of, and after a few years, most people even thought they must have died too.” He smiles but it holds no feeling behind it. “And so the Hale name faded into obscurity, and it is not spoken of, save only in whispered tales of warning.”

Stiles glances down as the cutlery bends in Peter’s hands. He curls one of his own around the werewolf’s nearest wrist, and after a thundering heartbeat of wrestling his rage back down, Peter drops the fork and knife back onto the table, deformed beyond repair.

Stiles reaches over and wraps them in a napkin before sticking it into his bag. He’ll have to get rid of them later. In the meantime, he gets up and heads over to the buffet to fetch another set for Peter.

By the time he gets back, the tension’s simmered down again. Auguste’s gone back to eating, and Peter manages a nod of thanks as Stiles hands him the cutlery.

“What do you require of me?” Auguste continues briskly as if their conversation had never taken a detour. “Do you wish for me to act as a spy?”

“Um, not a spy exactly,” Stiles says. “More like a thief. We need the blueprints of the place. When we break in, we don’t want there to be any surprises, so we need to know the layout, where the weapons are, what traps they have, you know? We’re also planning on making it look like they got into a fight between themselves and killed each other, so when the police arrive, we need them to be able to find all the evidence of everything the Argents have done - all the people they’ve killed or tortured or whatever. We’ve been doing our own research - digging up articles of suspicious murders and cold cases and stuff - but so far it’s mostly just guesswork. We’re pretty sure they’ve kept actual records - I mean it seems a very proud-psychopath thing to do, to keep evidence so they can boast about it over Thanksgiving turkey or something - so it would be better if we can use that instead, which means we also need you to make sure that the evidence is in that compound before we bust in.”

Stiles falters before admitting, “I know it’s a lot to ask. We can’t even tell you a general idea of where to start looking for any of that stuff. Maybe Gerard’s office? But we don’t even know where that is so you’d have to look around on your own.”

He trails off, eyeing the way Auguste is absently tapping a finger against his tea mug, deep in thought.

“You wish to destroy their reputation,” Auguste finally murmurs. “But not kill them all?”

“We’re looking into each one,” Stiles answers. “We know Kate and Gerard are responsible for the fire,” He darts a glance at Peter, who only takes another bite of his scrambled eggs very calmly. “But their main line’s also got a seventeen-year-old daughter so she would’ve been like eleven at the time of the fire. Peter says we don’t kill kids.”

Auguste flicks a raised eyebrow at Peter. Peter stares back stonily. Stiles looks between them, confused.

Auguste hums an acknowledgement. “And is that all you want me to do?”

“We don’t need your help killing them,” Peter cuts in coolly. “And I don’t think I need to tell you that if you sell us out to the Argents or give us false information, you’re going to either have to make sure the Argents get us first or find a deep enough hole to hide in for the rest of your undead life.”

Stiles almost face-palms. Auguste looks from Peter to Stiles and back to Peter, and for some reason, he chuckles.

“My type is hardly _infant_ , Hale,” The vampire murmurs, and Peter outright snarls.

“Okay!” Stiles pipes out before they have to deal with an impromptu murder in the restaurant. He thinks he finally has an inkling of just what bothers Peter so much about the vampire, although did Auguste just call him an infant?

Well whatever, he’s not hashing that out here. Why can’t they just stick to business? “So! Are you gonna help?”

Auguste focuses on him again and nods once. “My word is my honour. If this is what you require of me, then you may consider it done.” He pauses for just a beat. “I would like to know one thing however.”

Stiles blinks questioningly at him.

Auguste _smiles_ , and it’s nothing short of _bloodthirsty_ this time even as his voice comes out perfectly nonchalant. “Victoria Argent. Gerard Argent’s daughter-in-law, I believe. Is she on your list?”

Stiles exchanges a look with Peter. “Uh, yeah? We don’t have a as much on her as we do on Kate and Gerard, and she isn’t connected to the fire, but we did manage to tie her to several deaths that were all ruled as accidents, or people who disappeared. Peter managed to verify some of them though - a handful of omega werewolves, a very small pack of three nomadic werewolves, a family of sirens, several witches, and a couple chimeras, most of whom weren’t guilty of anything except being what they were, and those are only the ones we could dig up. So yeah, she’s gotta go, even if her daughter is the one we mentioned earlier. Her husband’s dealt in some shady shit too, but he might actually be better than his wife, which is surprising because he’s _actually_ Gerard’s son. I dunno, we might leave him alive, depending on what else we find.”

Auguste listens intently, and when Stiles finishes, he nods. “Then, I wish to ask something of you in return.”

“That’s not actually how debts work,” Peter snorts, but his eyes have narrowed, and something like dawning realization colours his features.

“Then I shall owe you another debt,” Auguste parries back easily, never taking his gaze off Stiles. “When you go and kill the Argents, you are free to deal with Kate and Gerard and whoever else as you please. But Victoria Argent is mine.”

Stiles takes that in for a moment, then glances at Peter once more. Peter stares at the vampire, shrewd-eyed and still. And then he scoffs and reclines back in his seat, coffee cradled between his hands.

“Hunters,” is all he bites out, and Stiles… Stiles just thinks about that for a moment, about the twisted smile playing on Auguste’s lips, about the vampire in general, who fed and healed and then came right after Stiles even though he was from a coven, with people to return to.

Once.

“Oh,” Stiles says quietly.

There’s not much to say after that.

 

* * *

 

“I wondered,” Peter confesses later once they’d parted ways again, agreeing to meet up later once Auguste switched over to their hotel because it was just easier for all of them to stay in the same place now that they’ve become co-conspirators. “When he first showed up last night. The Durand Coven was always smaller than the average vampire coven, but they were close-knit, even considered soft by some because they were probably as close to family as vampires could get. Durand should’ve headed home the moment he was freed, not tracked us down for some obscure debt.

“If the coven’s gone though… The Durands stuck to their territory, never really drew attention to themselves. That’s how they’ve lived for so long. They rarely even killed when they fed, and everybody knew they had a very strict policy for drinking from criminals only. But because they’d been around so long, they were also one of the most powerful covens in America despite its small numbers. I’m not surprised a hunter finally got around to wiping them out even though they never really did anything wrong, and even less surprised that it was an Argent who did it.”

Peter shakes his head, expression turning grim. “Well, we already knew darling Kate was aware I’d been locked up in Eichen House. It’s hardly a shock that another Argent would do the same to someone else. For Durand to have ended up there - maybe Eichen House wanted a vampire, so a hunter delivered. Killed off his coven, left one alive, and traded him in, maybe for money, maybe because she believed in Eichen House’s good work.” He runs a hand over his face but it doesn’t really hide the bitterness there. “And they call us monsters.”

Stiles says nothing, leaning into him instead and letting sparks jump between his hands.

He doesn’t really know what it’s like, to have someone come into your life and kill everyone you care about while you’re incapable of doing anything to prevent it. He would gladly raze the entire Argent family - down to the girl - to the ground because their creed and prejudice hurt Peter, but _personally_ , he has no real stake in this, not the way Peter does.

And maybe that makes him a monster too ( _you killed Mama, you’ve always been a monster_ ), to be able to kill someone who hasn’t done anything to _him_ personally ( _to be able to kill someone who couldn’t help herself, who was sick and it wasn’t her fault_ ).

But he’ll be a monster in defense of the only person he has left to care about, and that at least is a step up from the Argents, who are monsters only for their own fanatical beliefs and psychotic enjoyment.

Stiles can live with that.

 

* * *

 

After that, they share their conjectures and findings with Auguste. Peter still doesn’t like the vampire very much, but after that first breakfast together, he seems more inclined to set their differences aside and focus on the task at hand, even if they do still snipe at each other every now and then.

So Peter’s the one who gets Auguste up to speed, explaining the kind of evidence they’ll need and that the Argents will hopefully have, as well as the plan of attack on the day of. Peter’s actually already drawn a layout of the property from what he got from satellite images, and he’s even guessed a number of defenses the Argents have so he points out various places for Auguste to check first.

“Bring a camera,” Peter half-suggests, half-orders. “Take pictures of everything. You don’t need actual blueprints so long as you manage to come back with visuals. I can draw the rest.”

“You realize,” Auguste interjects. “That all of this is pointless if you cannot take down their security cameras before I get there? I may be able to travel through the shadows in that house, I will almost certainly be able to get in and get out undetected, I might even be able to take pictures of the house’s interior without being seen, but there is absolutely no way I can search their file cabinets or safes or whatever else they have without the cameras seeing me open them. On the other hand, if you blackout the cameras, they are going to know something is wrong anyway. Best case scenario, you manage to pass it off as a power outage, but they might become suspicious and add extra security measures anyway, especially since at least two members of that family have had dealings with Eichen House, and they will have most definitely heard of the breakout by now.”

“Oh, that’s me!” Stiles bounces forward as Peter leans back with a faint smirk while Auguste blinks at him. “That’s where I come in.” He claps his hands together, and when he parts them, a ball of light swirls between his palms. A twist of his fingers and the ball shreds itself into several dozen squiggly coils of electricity that jump between his fingers. “I’ve been experimenting more, ever since Peter explained to me what a Spark is and how I can make things happen with the power of my imagination.”

“That’s not exactly what I said,” Peter mutters.

Stiles ignores him. He flicks a wrist, and the multiple currents phase back together into a ball. “All you have to do is stick this into the nearest camera you find. The Argents’ cameras are all one system. Um, closed circuit, I think? But anyway, you’ll basically be putting me into the cameras cuz this is my magic. I can’t get in like you can, but once I’m in the system, I should be able to control what the cameras see.” He pauses. “Theoretically. I mean I did it with our video camera earlier. For a few seconds.”

Auguste arches an eyebrow.

Stiles huffs. “I’ll practice more. Honestly, we’re not gonna send you in there unprotected, you know.”

He gets a second raised eyebrow for that, accompanied by a strange expression that Stiles can’t figure out, and Peter is of no help, sitting there and rolling his eyes.

Auguste sighs. “Very well. Hale, go over what records you want me to look for. Even Sparks tire, so it would be best if I had some idea of the kind of documents I’ll need to ensure are there. I am assuming you’ll want backup copies too, and I refuse to take pictures of _everything_.”

Peter looks mildly disgruntled at being told what to do, but he also starts rifling through the stack of files they’ve compiled.

Stiles moves back over to the couch, tossing the ball of light into the air. It lands on Stiles’ cell phone when it comes back down, sinking straight into the device just as Stiles sprawls back on the sofa and closes his eyes.

He reaches for the pulse of his magic next, and when he /opens/ his /eyes/ again, it’s to a floating world of golden static and - beyond that - a cream-coloured ceiling as his phone begins to record.

 

* * *

 

It takes two weeks for Stiles to feel confident enough in his newfound ability to finally send Auguste in. Even Auguste looks a little tense behind his smirk as they stand in the shadows of an alley outside the hotel and Stiles tucks his magic into the vampire’s coat pocket.

Peter’s the only one who looks completely unconcerned. “Whatever happened to your faith in our resident Spark?”

Auguste slants a sardonic look at him. “You are welcome to sneak in in my place, Hale.”

Peter smiles back thinly. “Trust me, if I had the right fingerprints and knew all the security codes to the property, I would.” He gaze sharpens into something just short of a glare. “Stiles says he can do it, so he will.”

Peter’s conviction settles on Stiles like a hug, and some of his nervousness eases, just a little. When he glances over, the werewolf is watching him with steady eyes, and Stiles straightens and nods.

His magic’s never failed him when it counted. _Stiles_ has never failed when it counted.

“If you die,” Peter adds to Auguste, who watched their exchange in silent contemplation. “We’re not carrying out your revenge for you.”

The vampire scoffs, and something in him seems to strengthen. “Please, as if you would even be able to carry it out properly.”

Peter bares fangs at him. Auguste’s smirk grows, but he says nothing more as he takes a step back, nods at them, and then promptly melts away into the shadows under his feet.

“...You let him rile you up more than you actually are,” Stiles remarks.

Peter shrugs as they turn and begin heading back to their room. “We don’t need him chickening out at a crucial moment.”

“I really don’t think he’s going to do that.”

“...And if I were him, I’d be more afraid of getting captured again than getting killed, and both are equally likely in the heart of Argent territory. If irritating me settles his nerves, then so be it. I’ll deny it if you tell him though.”

Stiles snickers, unrepentant even when Peter cuffs him around the head with a roll of his eyes.

“Let’s get you settled somewhere comfortable,” The werewolf says as they reach their room. “We’ve come this far with Durand; might as well make sure nothing happens to him until this is over.”

 

* * *

 

The first phase of their plan goes off without a hitch, much to Peter’s smug satisfaction.

It’s a lot, when Stiles first invades the Argent’s CCTV system, a little like having his ears assaulted by too much noise all at once. But he finds his balance, learns to focus the same way he’s practiced on a smaller scale for two weeks, and it’s almost easy when he finally manages to sync with the cameras.

He projects a still frame of each room they’re monitoring, and it still takes most of his concentration to do it, but he does get lucky in that Auguste decided that late evening was best for infiltrating the property - early enough for plenty of shadows to exist and merge from one to the other, but also late enough that most of the guards and housekeepers have either turned in for the night or have settled down for a boring night shift.

It’s lucky too that most of the Argents are away at the moment. Peter’s found out that Chris Argent lives in his own house in another state with his wife and daughter, and Kate is either still covering her tracks by murdering her accomplices in the Hale conspiracy or on another hunt, so the only Argent currently living on the estate is Gerard.

Auguste does end up having to wait a few hours for Gerard to finally go to bed because apparently the man likes holing himself up in his study, probably busy plotting how to ruin more lives. Auguste manages to case the entire house - including the creepy dungeon in the basement - _and_ idle away another two hours before Gerard finally turns in.

It takes almost the rest of the night to get through the entirety of Gerard’s office, because holy crap the guy is both meticulous and stupidly arrogant.

Auguste finds records, alright. Names, related articles, who killed what, when, and where - everything is all there. It’s like hitting the jackpot of murders.

Auguste carefully lays out anything that looks remotely relevant and snaps pictures of them all while Stiles keeps the camera focused on an empty room. Not even the safe gives Auguste any pause because apparently the vampire can reach _into_ the safe through the shadows cast by a thread of Stiles’ magic that stayed with him instead of going into the security cameras and retrieving the files that way.

By the time dawn is peeking over the horizon, Auguste has stashed everything away with meticulous care, done a last sweep of the room, and then fled into the dawn.

On Stiles’ part, he lets his grip on his magic loosen, there’s a disorienting moment of upside-down-and-sideways, and then he’s back in his body and so exhausted he can’t even lift his head. Dark spots creep into his vision, but the last thing he sees is Peter hovering over him.

“Get some rest, sweetheart. You deserve it.”

 

* * *

 

He wakes two days later, stomach gurgling hungrily and a vampire and a werewolf on the floor around his bed with photos and paper _everywhere_.

Half an hour later, still stuffing his face with mashed potatoes but feeling relatively more alive, Stiles lies on end of the bed and watches the other two work.

“Who has literal _mines_ buried in their own front yard?” Stiles asks incredulously as Peter maps out the Argent property with an expert hand.

“Paranoid rich people who know they’re hated by half the world, and that doesn’t mean the other half loves them,” Peter mutters. “But we can work with that. You won’t even have to go inside to detonate them, and won’t that be the perfect hello?”

Stiles nods his agreement. Still. _Mines_.

His gaze slides over to Auguste, who’s flipping through snapshots of a report and forging a second edited copy with all references to the supernatural taken out. Apparently, not all of it was typed up.

“Is forgery a vampire thing or a you thing?” Stiles wonders out loud.

Auguste flicks an amused look at him. “Live long enough and you tend to pick up your fair share of eclectic skills.” His voice remains light as he continues, “I can’t say for other vampires, but my coven liked learning anything that caught their interest, illegal or otherwise. Immortality is fairly boring otherwise.”

Stiles nods thoughtfully. That makes sense. (More sense than mines, in his opinion.)

He reaches down and picks up a stack of photos, flipping through them and frowning when he realizes it’s one about delivering several succubi to Eichen House for the doctors to figure out if their powers of seduction can be surgically removed.

Stiles puts the photos down. “...I guess it was always pretty obvious Eichen House had hunters running around capturing people for them, huh?”

“Well, who better than a bunch of prejudiced serial killers to do half their dirty work for them,” Peter sighs, glancing up from his work and then reaching over to give Stiles’ wrist a brief squeeze. “Stiles, it’s a good thing we found a link. The police will have to investigate this too.”

Stiles nods and sets the photos aside. He finishes off his mashed potatoes and sets the bowl aside before curling up on his side and letting his mind drift. He still feels kind of drained so it’s not long before he’s nodding off again to the quiet scratch of pencils, the rustle of paper, and the comfortable calm around him.

 

* * *

 

It takes a month to finish everything - in particular, forging the Argents’ successful hunts in a way that won’t clue the police in on the supernatural world, and figuring out a way to gather the family all together.

“Can’t we just forge letters in Gerard’s handwriting to call them home?” Stiles wonders.

“No one pens letters these days,” Auguste sighs, sounding exactly his age for a moment.

“Yeah, but Gerard’s an old dude like you,” Stiles points out.

Peter sniggers. Auguste sends them both long-suffering looks.

“Gerard,” The vampire says dryly. “Has several hundred years to go before he will ever approach anything like me, thank you.”

In the end, the solution falls into their laps. For all that the Argent property has everything from explosives to electric fences to literal lasers, Gerard’s phone isn’t anywhere near as rigged. One of Peter’s contacts comes through after a few dropped threats and reminders, and then they’re suddenly able to see and hear all of Gerard’s incoming and outgoing calls and texts.

And shortly into the month of April, Gerard calls both Kate and Christopher - with Victoria - home to discuss the Eichen House breakout.

 

* * *

 

“I guess murdering all her eye-witnesses wasn’t enough,” Peter says that same night, curled around Stiles. “If the staff at Eichen House told her I was still alive and managed to escape, they’re going to be wondering why I haven’t surfaced even after all these months.”

Stiles wriggles around until he’s facing Peter instead of being the little spoon. “They can wonder all they want. But Kate and Victoria are flying in on Monday, they’ll probably be tired, and Christopher isn’t going to arrive for another couple days since he’s finishing up some contractor job or whatever, so that night will be the best time to attack if we’re really leaving him and his daughter out of it, and then we can finally get rid of them once and for all.”

Peter makes a negative sound. “That’s still a couple days’ leeway, and I think we can take them whether or not they’re at their best, especially when they’re not expecting us either way. We can put it off for a day or two.”

Stiles blinks. “Why? What else do have to do?”

Peter studies him for a moment. “...It’s your birthday on Monday, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to celebrate? You only turn seventeen once.”

Stiles… stares.

His birthday.

Right.

It’s not like he’s forgotten, not really. He knows the month, the day, even remembers the year he was born. But he hasn’t celebrated in seven years, arguably more because once his mom got too sick, it wasn’t like there was anyone to bake him a cake or light the candles or pick out presents for him.

His birthday hasn’t been anything important in a long time, and it just… didn’t occur to him that maybe it _should_ be.

“I don’t… really want any presents,” Stiles says slowly, because Peter gives him anything and everything already anyway. “We could just go for a meal or something?”

He makes a mental note to look up Peter’s birthday later. Hopefully he hasn’t missed it.

Peter smiles, sly and secretive. “I have a little something planned, and it’ll include lunch. Just the two of us.” He pauses. “Unless you want to invite the vampire too. I suppose I can fit him in.”

Stiles huffs a laugh but shakes his head. “Nah, we already spend plenty of time with him. Since we’re doing something special, I kinda just wanna spend it with you.”

Peter beams, and Stiles is hard-pressed not to roll his eyes. He can’t say he doesn’t feel the same way though. He likes Auguste well enough - the guy’s honestly the first person aside from Peter that Stiles is okay with spending time around - but it’s been a while since they weren’t all neck-deep in preparing for their confrontation with the Argents, and it would be nice to just have Peter to himself if they’re really going to celebrate.

“Oh good,” Peter says cheerfully. “Because I already told Durand to entertain himself for the day.”

Stiles snorts.

He supposes it goes without saying that Peter too wants Stiles to himself as well.

 

* * *

 

For Stiles’ seventeenth birthday, Peter drives them up to Lake Michigan around noontime. He brings a picnic basket and towels, and sitting there on the beach with the water stretching on for what seems like forever, Stiles has rarely ever seen anything so beautiful.

“Beacon Hills is landlocked,” Peter tells him, watching with soft eyes as Stiles kicks off his sandals and runs into the tide, only to screech at the cold and dance back out. “And you mentioned you’d never been to the coast. This isn’t quite the ocean, but I figured it’s a decent enough substitute until we can go see the real thing.”

“I love it!” Stiles gushes. He’s strong enough these days that he isn’t so easily tired anymore, and Peter even brought an umbrella along so Stiles can rest in the shade whenever the heat gets a bit much.

The sand is soft under his feet, while the water sparkles under the sun. Peter even made Stiles’ favourite egg and potato salad, and he doesn’t call him childish when Stiles suggests building a sandcastle.

“I think I’d like a beach house,” Stiles muses wistfully. Wouldn’t that be awesome, to wake up to the sound and smell of ocean waves every day? And with a coastal breeze, he doesn’t think it would get _too_ hot, even in the summer. He supposes it does depend on the location though.

“Would you?” Peter’s on his back beside him, comfortable as a cat as he soaks in the sunlight. “I could make that happen.”

Stiles purses his lips. “Would _you?_ ” He chews on his lip before forging on, “I want to live somewhere where we’d both be happy, so you have to like the house and the place and the weather and whatever else too. It can’t just be me.”

Peter stares for a long minute up at the sky, eyes half-mast against the sunshine.

“...I would want some woods nearby,” He says eventually. “Forest I can run in. Maybe a stretch of it behind the house. But this kind of view is nice too. I certainly wouldn’t mind finding a home that faced the ocean.”

Stiles grins, as relieved as he is delighted, if he’s honest. On occasion, he thinks Peter just agrees to everything Stiles wants even when _he_ doesn’t want it, because he wants to make Stiles happy, so it’s good to hear Peter’s opinion about their hypothetical house too.

He rolls onto his stomach and inches perpendicular to Peter until he can use the man’s abs as a handy chinrest. Peter snorts with amusement but also reaches down and begins combing fingers through Stiles’ hair in a druggingly soothing motion.

“I want to make one thing very clear though, sweetheart,” Peter adds over the distant call of birds overhead and the whoosh of waves several dozen feet away. “I can live anywhere and be happy so long as you’re there too. Everything else is just… bonus.”

Stiles flushes a little and presses his face into Peter’s stomach for a moment, vindictively kneading his chin against the twitching muscles because he knows Peter is just a little bit ticklish.

Then he lifts his head and makes a face in Peter’s direction. “Yeah, yeah, you know it’s the same for me too. I mean, vice versa-”

“No, Stiles,” Peter interrupts. “I mean yes, I know the feeling is mutual, but that’s not quite what I meant this time. Not entirely at least.” He pauses, as if to gather his thoughts and translate them into the right words. “...You make me want a future after the Argents. You make me want to live. I don’t think I would if I didn’t have you.”

And _oh_ , well that’s…

Stiles turns onto his side, pillowing his cheek against Peter’s ribs. “That’s the same for me too, you know. It’s not like I have anywhere else to go. But even if I did, even if I could… go home to my dad, I wouldn’t want to.” He shuts his eyes and listens to the waves, sun-warm and safe, and even with murder on the horizon, he can’t remember the last time he was this content with his lot in life. “You could’ve left me behind once we got out. I mean, we were just working together to escape Eichen House. We never talked about sticking together afterwards. But you took me with you instead of leaving me behind and you wanted me to stay and-”

Stiles has a moment of vertigo when Peter suddenly sits up and hauls Stiles into his lap like he weighs nothing.

“I will always want you with me,” Peter says fiercely. “You’re my pack. You’re everything.”

Stiles has to swallow hard before he finds his voice again. “Same. You’re everything to me too.”

And in the end, it’s not such a surprise when Peter brushes a kiss to his forehead, then cheek, then to the corner of his mouth.

Stiles blinks owlishly at him, the two of them close enough for their noses to brush and for Stiles to go cross-eyed for a moment as he adjusts to the proximity. But Peter waits him out, warm against him and composed in a way Stiles would envy if not for the rapid flutter of Peter’s heartbeat pressed against his hand.

He moves his head, just a little, and his lips skim over Peter’s before he stills again. For a moment, they stay just like that, a soft sort of pressure between their mouths that doesn’t end until the corners of Peter’s eyes crinkle with a smile that’s mirrored by a quirk of his lips, and Stiles lurches away, cheeks flushing.

He doesn’t go far though, doesn’t leave Peter’s lap. Likewise, Peter doesn’t try to hold him there, but his hands remain framed around Stiles’ waist, one thumb sweeping circles into his skin.

“Was that okay?” The man asks, and the lack of judgement or accusation behind the question makes Stiles feel like he could say no if he wants to, and Peter would listen. Peter always listens.

But- “Kisses are okay,” Stiles decides. “But only kisses. For now.”

“Alright,” Peter agrees easily, and does exactly that, coaxing another dry press of lips from Stiles before the werewolf nuzzles into his neck instead. Honestly, sometimes Stiles thinks Peter likes scenting him more than anything else. As if Stiles doesn’t smell enough like him already, as Auguste once pointed out.

“Your beard is itchy,” Stiles complains, but he makes no move to push Peter away.

And because Peter’s sometimes an asshole, he just flashes a smirk at Stiles and very deliberately rubs his stubble against Stiles’ already reddening skin.

Stiles hisses and knees him in the ribs. Peter grunts and promptly dumps him back into the sand in a way that somehow gets the stuff down Stiles’ shorts.

Stiles swears, which just makes Peter laugh.

He’s not laughing for long when Stiles levitates some lake water by scooping it up into a bubble made of light before popping it right above Peter’s head.

By the time they leave the beach, they’re damp with sand drying on various parts of their bodies, and Stiles thinks he could definitely get used to birthdays again if this is how they celebrate every single year.

 

* * *

 

Auguste rolls his eyes when they get back to the hotel. But - for once - he doesn’t comment, merely turning back to his newspaper as Stiles and Peter set about getting cleaned up.

He only speaks once they’re finished and waiting for room service.

“Tomorrow then?” The vampire asks, mostly rhetorically.

Peter nods curtly anyway, while Stiles hums a confirmation.

Tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

The Argents’ day of reckoning begins at 9:15 PM. The timing amuses Peter, but also the night shift guards settle into their usual stations shortly before nine so this is the best time.

Auguste slits the throat of every single one patrolling the outside wall with frighteningly silent efficiency.

Stiles reaches out for the remnants of his magic in the security cameras and short-circuits them all. Immediately after that, as soon as Auguste is finished, he lets a ball of light expand between his hands, and then with one wide swinging motion, he lobs the golden sphere right over the walls, lets it hit the front yard, bounce once, twice, three times, and then _detonates_.

The explosion roars up at the night sky like a challenge, shattering metal and stone and sending debris raining back down. Somewhere inside, an alarm shrills. People are shouting or screaming or nothing at all, bloody limbs strewn across the once-immaculate front lawn.

And through the haze of dust and dirt, Peter bounds through the ragged new hole in the wall, wolfed out and snarling as he hurtles towards the house.

“Auguste?” Stiles hollers above the noisy blast of gunfire.

“Go,” The vampire isn’t even looking at him, staring into the distance as if he can see his prey even through however many walls and a ton of rubble. Stiles wouldn’t be surprised if he could. Auguste drank his fill and then some before he came here tonight, and his eyes are a brighter, bloodier red than Stiles has ever seen them. Even his body seems to not be all there, flickering at the edges like his form might give way to shadow any second now.

“You have your hunt, and I have mine,” The vampire adds, finally turning to look at Stiles. His smile is kind, however momentarily it comes. “Go after your wolf and make sure he does not lose his head.”

Stiles frowns, but it’s not like he was ever planning on doing anything else. Not even for the recklessness in Auguste’s eyes.

“Don’t die!” He shouts instead. “The Argents aren’t worth that!”

It’s the only thing he can offer, here and now, and then he’s off, pelting after Peter, the magic inside him urging him on.

 

* * *

 

Stiles bursts into the parlor room - where a chunk of the wall is missing, the chandelier’s shattered on the floor, and a table’s been overturned - just as a massive literal axe swings down out of the far end of the ceiling and groans across the room like something straight out of some medieval castle.

Stiles claps his hands, bringing his magic to bear and then slamming the full weight of it into the axe. Said axe snaps off from whatever mechanism it was attached to, the metal groaning and bending and melting under Stiles’ attack as it veers off-course before crashing through another wall in a heap of at least three pieces and a mountain of wood and plaster.

A moment of stunned silence follows. The three nameless hunters crowded in the opposite doorway gapes in a shocked sort of horror.

Peter, standing a few feet away from Stiles, has no such hang-ups. He vaults the overturned table in one leap and gets his claws into two hunters’ throats when he comes down practically on top of them.

The third curses, fumbling to raise his gun and fire, but Stiles is already there, and a horizontal slice of his hand creates a brief flare of light around the hunter’s neck before blood sprays in the air and stains part of the doorframe as the man’s head slides right off his shoulders and hits the floor with a wet thump. The rest of his body takes a few seconds longer to crumple.

Footsteps from somewhere out of sight charge towards them, and a spray of gunfire through the far wall has both of them ducking.

“Go!” Stiles shouts to Peter. “I’ll take care of these guys! Go after Kate and Gerard!”

For a single breathless second, Peter stares at him, splattered with blood, claws dripping with it, eyes a chilling blue.

“Don’t die,” Stiles repeats. “And I won’t either.”

_But I didn’t come here today for you to babysit me. I am not your responsibility. I am your Pack._

Peter’s shoulders drop, and he nods. “Be careful,” he growls, and then he’s gone, loping after the two Argents who burned his world to the ground.

Stiles turns when the first of the new batch of hunters comes barrelling into the room, gun already pointed at Stiles.

“Who the fuck are you?!” The hunter snaps, no doubt taking in just how young Stiles is.

Stiles ponders that question for a brief second before announcing, “Your _doom!_ ”

A couple minutes, several dozen bullets, and a wash of gold light that not only reduces the hunters to ash but also all the furniture in the room, Stiles strolls off in the direction Peter went, making a face to himself and muttering, “It’s lucky Peter didn’t hear me say that. He’d never let me live it down. I sounded ridiculous, what the fuck.”

A howl punctuates the air somewhere in the distance, and Stiles breaks into a jog.

It's time to end this.

 

* * *

 

Peter’s in the process of ripping Kate’s pretty little - blonde now - head off when Stiles catches up. They’re out back on the veranda, Kate’s gurgling scream is abruptly cut short, and Stiles blocks another shower of bullets heading towards Peter from the old man hunkered down behind one of the pillars.

Gerard’s eyes dart to Stiles, burning with a hatred that almost makes him take a startled step back. He doesn’t, and after a second of consideration, he also shatters the gun in Gerard’s hands.

“Monster,” The old man spits out, disgust almost eclipsing the fear underneath.

Stiles shrugs. Well, it’s not like he didn’t come to terms with that a long time ago.

Peter on the other hand is less accepting, rising to his feet and stalking towards Gerard, fangs bared, expression a storm of rage and bloodlust.

Gerard turns and runs. It’s futile, and he probably knows it too, but there’s no other option left to him either.

Peter takes three running strides before leaping into the air. He comes down right behind Gerard’s fleeing form, and in the time it takes to blink, he’s snagged the hunter by the throat and slammed him to the ground.

Stiles sees the edge of a knife before a bat of Peter’s hand sends it skittering away across the veranda.

“Did you think,” Peter seethes as Gerard scrabbles in vain at the werewolf’s iron grip. “That I wouldn’t catch up to you? Did you really think you could get away with killing _my family?!_ ”

He doesn’t give Gerard a chance to say his piece, to explain or rant or beg for his life. His hand tightens, and this time he doesn’t use his claws, crushing Gerard’s throat instead and watching the light leave the infamous hunter’s bulging bloodshot eyes.

 

* * *

 

In the aftermath, as Peter remains hunched over and heaving for breath, Stiles approaches from behind and doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around the werewolf from behind.

“Peter?” His arms tighten, his magic already rushing up to prod at the werewolf. “Come on, let me check you over. Are you injured?”

It takes a few seconds, but eventually, Peter straightens, takes a stumbling step back into Stiles, and then almost sags to the floor before catching himself again.

Stiles mutters a curse and quickly circles around to Peter’s front. “Peter! You’ve been shot, damn it!”

“It’s fine,” Peter grunts, pressing a hand to the three bullet holes in his front. “Just grab one of the bullets-”

Gold light pours into the wounds, suffusing the rest of him while it’s at it and purging the wolfsbane from his system.

“Or you could do that,” Peter sighs in relief as his werewolf healing kicks in, and then he promptly plasters himself against Stiles and shoves his face into Stiles’s neck. “It’s over.”

“Not yet,” Stiles says, gently but firmly. “We still have to replace all the records with the ones we doctored, remember? And I have to check up on Auguste. Come on, Peter, home stretch, let’s go.”

Peter grumbles but peels himself off Stiles and straightens. He looks over at Gerard’s broken corpse, and then at Kate’s, and his expression tightens with too many emotions to name. But then he turns away, back towards the interior of the house, and he nods briskly.

“Alright, I’ll grab the documents, you find Durand and make sure Victoria hasn’t offed him. Kate was with Gerard when I first saw them but Victoria must’ve been in some other part of the house.”

Stiles nods back, and both of them speed off in different directions. His magic points the way, right down into the creepy torture dungeon, where…

Where Auguste, missing an arm but otherwise intact, is leaning against one stone wall and isn’t doing much of anything except staring unblinkingly at the bonfire burning away in the middle of one of the cells.

Stiles is suddenly so glad Peter didn’t come down here with him. The flames lick against the stone floor, swallowing up the bits of wood scattered everywhere, shadows flickering and jumping around them. For a moment, staring into the crackling orange-red of the fire, Stiles catches a glimpse of a woman’s melted remains of a face twisted in agony.

_“Please, as if you would even be able to carry it out properly.”_

“She finished screaming a while ago,” Auguste says, very calmly. “I should be done soon. You should head back up.”

Stiles clears his throat. Checks the vampire. Sighs. “Um. No. She’s dead, right?”

Auguste shrugs carelessly. “Yes.”

“Right then,” Stiles takes two steps forward to draw level with Auguste, grabs the vampire by his remaining arm, and begins hauling him towards the stairs. “Let’s go. We still need to replace all the reports and stuff. And where’s your arm? We can’t leave it lying around even if you can’t reattach it. _Can_ you reattach it? I mean you’re not bleeding at least so...”

Auguste, Stiles thinks, very seriously considers digging in his heels. So it’s probably a good thing that he decides against it in the end because Stiles has no qualms trussing him up with his magic and dragging him out of here if necessary.

“My arm was lost to the fire,” Auguste says instead. “It is fine, I can live without.”

“You better,” Stiles mutters. “We’ll sort it out later. Peter’s gone to fetch the records.”

“A werewolf playing fetch?” Auguste smirks a little, and it even almost reaches his eyes. “How-”

“Fuck off, Durand,” Peter snarls as he stalks through one of the still intact doorways with a bag slung over one shoulder. “At least I took care of my business without needing a babysitter.”

Auguste’s eyebrows rise almost to his hairline, and his face could not have screamed bullshit more if he tried.

“Oh my god, argue later!” Stiles cuts in, finally letting Auguste go in favour of seizing the bag from Peter. “At this rate, we’ll still be here when the cops arrive! Peter, go make sure everybody’s actually dead and the bodies don’t look like someone else came in and… well, murdered them very hard. Auguste, take half and _let’s go_.”

Stiles strides away, still muttering darkly under his breath because seriously, there is a time and place. At least the two idiots don’t argue with _him_ about this.

 

* * *

 

By the time they’re finished making the place look like a civil war had taken place inside, it’s well and truly dark but for the various fires burning away in the compound, and even Stiles can hear the sirens approaching.

“Time to go,” Stiles says, plucking at his tattered sleeve from where a blowtorch popping out of the walls surprised him right before Auguste tackled him to the ground.

“Here,” Peter says gruffly as he shoves a dead hunter at Auguste. “Drink, and then let’s get out of here. I’ve had enough of Argents to last me ten lifetimes.”

“Blood from a dead man just isn’t the same,” Auguste remarks mournfully even as he takes the body.

Peter closes his eyes and tries very hard not to look like he wants to rip the vampire’s throat out.

Stiles rolls his eyes at both of them.

Auguste drinks, Stiles disintegrates the corpse before sparking a much smaller light for them, and as their shadows stretch back towards the city, Auguste gets a firm grip on Stiles and Peter, steps into the flickering dark, and vanishes with both of them in tow.

 


	4. Finale

 

Over the next days and weeks and months, it’s as if someone lit a fire under the collective law enforcement bodies of America. The sheer treasure trove they found at the site of the Argent property was enough to reopen cases all across the States and several other countries besides, with the Hale fire case - thought to be an accident, now confirmed as arson - being one of the most prominent due to the sheer number of people murdered, and almost half of those having been children.

So of course, one of the places hit hardest by the consequences of an entire family of serial killers coming to light though has been Beacon Hills.

Seemingly overnight, FBI swarms the town, local law enforcement publicly agrees to cooperate, and Eichen House is practically dismantled from the top down. All registered patients have been relocated to Beacon Hills Memorial or other mental health institutions elsewhere, to be looked after and rediagnosed by other professionals. Every member of staff - and several dozen others who weren’t actually staff but were ambushed all the same in the underground belly of Eichen House - has been arrested, and most are either awaiting trial or already in jail.

The illegal prison and human experimentation facilities discovered beneath the nuthouse has the entire country in general and Beacon Hills in particular up in arms.

And leading the charge is the local Sheriff, John Stilinski.

The Eichen House breakout case, supposedly a mass hallucination due to a drug - even after all these months - was never closed, and now that new evidence has come to light, the asylum is being picked apart by a fine-toothed comb.

Stiles and Peter watch it all from halfway across the country. There’s one particular shot that a couple news stations bring up more than a few times - an image of a stone-faced Sheriff marching the local vet of all people to the police car in cuffs, accused of aiding and abetting Eichen House’s illegal operations.

“Who is he?” Stiles asks, sounding mystified.

“Alan Deaton,” Peter growls. “He was the Hale Pack’s emissary, unofficially. He was never particularly helpful, but Talia liked him enough to keep him around.”

“What’s he got to do with anything though?” Stiles frowns. “I don’t remember seeing him in any of the Argents’ records.”

Peter’s jaw clenches briefly. “Technically, he didn’t have anything to do with the Argents’ dealings. Didn’t have anything to do with the fire either, but that’s just it - he didn’t _do_ anything. He’s a godforsaken druid, and he can’t even tell when there’s trouble in the town he’s living in? At best, he cared so little about my pack that he just didn’t bother keeping an eye out for threats to us, which I wouldn’t be surprised about.”

Peter shakes his head. “But if it was just that, well, I probably would’ve just left him be, especially since killing him would require going back to Beacon Hills.” He hesitates here before reminding him, “You remember I told you I wanted to dig into why you ended up in Beacon Hills?”

Stiles nods slowly. “Yeah. And… you did?”

“I did,” Peter confirms. “And you remember too, what Durand said about you leaving something of a trail for those who know what to look for after they’ve come into contact with your magic?”

Stiles nods again and glances over at the TV screen again for a moment.

“Alan Deaton,” Peter continues in colder tones. “Was very… concerned about the ‘balance’ of the world, of the natural energies that magic-users and supernatural creatures alike use and interact with every day. Most druids are, it’s the kind of principles they’re taught, to monitor the magical energies of whatever area they’ve put down roots in and make sure nobody is taking too much from the earth or using magic in a way that they think shouldn’t be used, and so on and so forth. Anyway, Deaton was - in my opinion - unsuitable as an emissary because he was too concerned about this balance. Proper emissaries - once they’ve agreed to join a pack - put that pack first, and maintaining the balance becomes a secondary priority.”

Peter nods at the TV even though the newscaster’s moved on to another topic by now. “The general opinion is that Deaton found out and turned a blind eye at best, or actively helped traffic humans into Eichen House at worst. From a supernatural angle though, from what I’ve managed to put together, I imagine he felt your magic that day you killed your mother in self-defense. A burst of power like that - Deaton is many things, but he isn’t incompetent, at least not when it comes to the druidic arts, and I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have felt a Spark reach maturity so suddenly, and so close to his location too.

“You told me you don’t remember much of anything between the time your mother was declared dead and arriving at Eichen House?” Peter looks grim now. “I think-- and this is still mostly just my own guesswork-- but I think what happened was that Deaton felt you come online, so to speak, and I don’t know if he could tell you were a Spark or not - like I said, most people believe Sparks are a myth - but either way, he knew you had magic, and he knew you had a lot of it, and he must’ve considered you a threat to nature’s balance. In fact, he might’ve felt threatened himself. You’re powerful, Stiles, and Deaton undoubtedly saw that, saw a threat to _him_ and the balance he charged himself with maintaining, and so he had to get rid of you. I think he may have fixed your memory a little, your father’s too, just to make sure neither of you would be able to point fingers at him, or maybe - for you - to go after him should you ever escape, and then he just… dropped a few recommendations to your father.

“I wrote to him,” Peter confesses, and Stiles jolts in place, more surprised by that than anything else Peter’s told him so far. Peter grimaces a little. “Anonymously of course, and I should’ve told you but I wasn’t sure if he’d act on it.” He pauses, and then shakes his head. “No, I should’ve told you, I’m sorry. I guess I just wasn’t sure how you’d react, and you didn’t seem to care much about how you ended up in Eichen House so you might have refused if it meant contacting your father, even anonymously.” His eyes flash. “But if Deaton _is_ responsible, and it’s looking increasingly likely that he is, then he shouldn’t be able to get away with it.”

He stops when Stiles takes his hands, letting gold sparks float lazily over their fingers.

“It’s fine,” Stiles shrugs, because it is, because it’s not like Peter is shipping _him_ off back to the Sheriff or something. “I said you could look into it.” He looks quizzically at the werewolf. “But why did you need to contact my dad? Just to tell him about Deaton?”

Peter shakes his head, absently twining their fingers together as he explains, “I just pointed him in Deaton’s direction, gave him a name and face to work with. It looks like they’ve found evidence in Eichen House’s records of Deaton working with them anyway, but that might’ve taken weeks or even months to uncover if nobody looked for that connection specifically, and that might’ve given Deaton enough time to disappear. So I told you father to look through the hospital’s old security tapes and see if he could find a recording of him approaching either of you in the hospital after your mother died. He might’ve, or he might just have gone straight to Eichen House’s archives and looked for Deaton there. Either way, it looks like he’s at least done his job, and Deaton hasn’t managed to get away with it.”

Stiles nods, gaze wandering back to the TV, not really seeing it. “...Do you think he thinks I’m dead?”

Peter tugs him closer, tucking him into his side. “I think he hopes you aren’t,” He offers after a moment of contemplation. “Either because you really escaped when they told him you ran away, or because you escaped in the breakout five months ago. The police have posted a notice asking Eichen House victims to step forward, haven’t they? They’re even offering recovery and restitution. Beacon Hills even made their own announcement, and the Sheriff’s apology speech was very nice. Maybe he’s hoping you’ll see it and go home.”

Stiles immediately stiffens. “I’m not going back.” He narrows his eyes at Peter. “You’re not suggesting I go back, are you?”

Peter scoffs. “Stiles, of course not.” He pauses and looks almost like he’s wrestling with something in his mind. “...I just mean he might be-”

“I know,” Stiles cuts him off, staring hard at their hands, listening to the newscaster drone on with half an ear. “I know Dad’s probably better these days. And maybe he’s sorry. Maybe he’s guilty. Maybe he’s… something. But that’s not- _I_ didn’t make him better. I mean I wasn’t around to make him anything. It’s been seven years, it looks like he might even have someone new, and maybe he’ll want a family with them, but I’m not gonna have a place in it. Maybe he thinks he wants me back, wants to be a dad to me again, but… he doesn’t know me. And I _know_ he wouldn’t approve of the kind of person I’ve become, and _I’m_ not gonna change who I am just for him. Maybe that guy - Deaton - messed with his memories a bit, but that doesn’t change the fact that he still left me at Eichen House and _never came back_.”

He looks up then, at Peter who watches him with a patience nobody but his mom has ever had when it came to listening to Stiles speak.

“I don’t blame him for blaming me for Mom,” He says quietly, clearly, and he thinks it took him a while to get to this point, to really decide what to feel about that whole clusterfuck seven years ago. “It happened fast, and he wasn’t there. It was weird and scary, and his _wife_ died, and no matter what else, I’m the one who killed her. So I don’t blame him for that. But he _abandoned me_. He didn’t even ask me for an explanation. Even if I couldn’t have given one, he didn’t even ask, and then he just left me. I don’t blame him for Mom, but I blame him for that, and I’m never gonna trust him again.”

He looks at the TV, then out the window, at a sky that stretches on forever, a sight he once honestly thought he’d never see again. “And I could never go back to living with someone I can’t trust, no matter who they are.”

He glances back at Peter, just in time to catch the flash of relief on the werewolf’s face before it’s squirrelled away again. Stiles rolls his eyes and pinches Peter’s thigh, making the werewolf yelp and glare.

“I’m not leaving you,” Stiles says exasperatedly, and Peter goes still. “I’m not sure how many times I have to say that for you to believe it, but I’m happy to say it as many times as you need me to. Even if I do think you’re an idiot for thinking I’m gonna up and leave just cuz my dad decided to be a better cop than a father.”

(He probably doesn’t have any room to throw stones though. They both know he appreciates it just as much whenever Peter implies forever for them.)

He squawks when Peter huffs and pulls him around before control-toppling them off the couch and onto the fluffy rug on the floor.

“Says the idiot who wants to ask if we can keep the pet vampire but won’t because you think I won’t like it,” Peter snarks back, and Stiles flushes, caught.

“I was going to ask you!” Stiles says defensively. “Soon.”

Peter rolls his eyes and then rolls himself to lie down beside Stiles. “If he wants to, he can stay. He’s annoying, but so is a cat when they’re knocking stuff off of shelves, so I suppose I’ll learn to live with it.” He pauses, then muses, “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad to have a slightly bigger pack than I originally planned for.”

Stiles hums and curls up into Peter’s side, making himself comfortable. “I like that we’re a small pack, I _really_ liked it when it was just the two of us, but… I dunno, I guess I’ve gotten used to having Auguste around, and- and he doesn’t have anyone else. Besides, he told me he owes me another debt, so I think that was his way of saying he wants to stay.”

He can practically hear Peter roll his eyes.

“When is he getting back anyway?” Peter grumbles. “I’m hungry, and I swear if he doesn’t get the right dip again-”

The door swings open as Stiles smothers giggles in Peter’s shoulder.

“I have your dip right here, Hale,” Auguste’s voice sounds from somewhere out of sight. “One would think you might perish simply because you ate a slice of pizza without this cheesy monstrosity.”

Peter sits up, unceremoniously dislodging Stiles just to growl, “I don’t want to hear that from a vampire who eats poutine like it’s blood.”

“Poutine is a delicacy, you heathen. I may be dead but I can still appreciate the finer things in life.”

Stiles sighs as the resident werewolf and vampire devolve into another verbal catfight. Well, if they’re going to be a pack, at least they all get along.

Sort of.

 

* * *

 

One year later, the three of them have finally settled on the east coast, on a patch of private property that spans several hundred miles, with the ocean on one side and forest on the other, a half-hour drive from the nearest city. They move into the house that was already there, but Peter has the inside gutted before personally redesigning the interior from the ground up.

They still have no Alpha. Auguste - obviously - doesn’t need one, but Peter never seems to notice the lack either, although it does amuse him sometimes to see their eyes - Peter’s blue, Auguste’s red, and Stiles’ gold.

(Auguste asks if that makes him the Alpha. Peter throws the carving knife he’d been using on their Thanksgiving turkey at the vampire. Auguste dodges so it ends up embedded in the wall, much to Peter’s displeasure. Stiles just sighs, wrenches it out, and repairs the - thankfully superficial - damage.

“This is why Stiles is my favourite.”

“Oh please, Hale, we both know that isn’t why Stiles is your _favourite_.”)

They’re… a family. Pack, but family in a way Stiles didn’t think he’d ever have again. Peter is still, well, _Peter_ \- Stiles would move heaven and hell and everything in-between for him, and the world would not survive if someone ever took the werewolf from him. But he’d kill for Auguste too, doesn’t really want to imagine life without the vampire either anymore, and however antagonistic Peter’s relationship with Auguste can get, Stiles knows he would defend the vampire just as fiercely as he would Stiles and vice-versa.

Auguste too seems content enough. He has moments of melancholy still, whenever he sits in a shadowed corner and stares off into the distance like he’s thinking of his old coven, but it isn’t as if Stiles doesn’t still wake up screaming from nightmares sometimes, and Peter still can’t be around an open flame without a fifty-fifty chance of being hit with a flashback.

But they have each other, and Stiles thinks that’s what’s most important. Peter’s always able to calm Stiles down when he wakes up in a panic, and Stiles knows how to talk Peter through panic attacks until he isn’t locked in his mind and burning anymore.

Peter fights with Auguste, sometimes literally when they want to spar, and that’s their way of showing they care about each other.

Auguste has both hands again too, after Stiles trial-and-errored his way through making him one. It is - unfortunately - also gold and sparkly, but a long-sleeve and a glove solves that problem neatly enough. Auguste tells him that that’s another debt, and Stiles thinks it’s weird that the vampire can’t just _say_ he’s sticking around for good and won’t ever betray them, but if it’s what Auguste is comfortable with, then Stiles won’t bring it up either.

They’re family. Pack. Stiles and Peter are mates in all but deed, while Auguste isn’t particularly interested but also has no qualms teasing them about their slow courtship.

(“A human and a werewolf,” Auguste remarked once. “At least we aren’t in Forks.”

Peter finally gets around to reading Twilight because he gets more offended than Stiles when Auguste makes book references he doesn’t understand, and the werewolf spends the rest of that afternoon making a very decent attempt at breaking Auguste’s face with the novel.)

Stiles is happy. He spent years thinking he wouldn’t ever be again, resigned himself to it and almost stopped caring at one point because it wasn’t like he was ever going to escape Eichen House’s clutches anyway.

But then Peter woke up, and Stiles suddenly _had_ someone, and he remembered what it was like to care.

Peter _made_ him care again.

“Can’t sleep?” Peter’s drowsy voice murmurs from beside him, sleep-roughened to a purr-like rasp. “Bad dream?”

Stiles shakes his head, turning onto his side and settling more comfortably in the bedding when Peter wraps an arm around him. “Just thinking. Go back to sleep.”

Peter hums an inquisitive note instead. “About what? It’s the middle of the night.”

Stiles debates brushing the question off; Peter’s certainly sleepy enough to let it go since Stiles isn’t showing any distress.

But-

“I’m happy,” Stiles says softly. “That’s what I was thinking. That I’m happy I survived Eichen House.”

Peter doesn’t react for a long moment, doesn’t even move, but when he does, it’s only to turn as well to further cocoon Stiles in his arms.

“Same, sweetheart,” Peter replies. “I’m happy _we_ survived.”

Stiles closes his eyes and smiles.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some miscellaneous tidbits:
> 
> \- Cora is... probably dead. There was no good place to fit her in when I was writing it, and I decided by the end that it was just a canonical plot twist I didn't need. Likewise, Malia just flat-out doesn't exist.
> 
> \- I left the Sheriff/Laura/Derek's reactions to Stiles and Peter pretty open-ended. That would've probably taken like another chapter at least to resolve, and I didn’t feel they absolutely needed to play more than passing parts in this fic, so you can just assume all three of them (especially the Sheriff) have considered what might’ve happened to Stiles and Peter respectively even if they don’t have proof. Eventually, I imagine one or all of them might even manage to track them down, and there’ll probably be Big Family Drama Times at that point.
> 
> \- I didn't tag this as underage since there's no sexual activity between them, Stiles is seventeen before any kind of romance starts happening, and even by the end of the fic, I feel like their relationship is still in its early stages and they're taking it super slow, partly because they're both happy just to be Pack to each other, partly because Peter knows not to push this, and partly because Stiles isn't going to hop straight into sexy times considering how he spent his past seven years. So mostly, they're more than a little codependent and touch-starved pack levels of tactile with budding feelings underneath, but also they're already everything to each other.
> 
>  
> 
> And I think that's it. It's been a trip getting this whole fic written in a month and a half but I've had this idea for a while now, and a few of your likes matched well enough that I finally decided to do it for SSS this year. I did try a time travel AU first but that one didn't work out so I went with this one instead. I hope you enjoyed it, and best wishes for the rest of the holidays!


End file.
